Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store (kapeli.com)

Popular API documentation browser Dash was pulled from the App Store this week after a routine migration request, its developer Bogdan Popescu wrote in a blog post. He said the migration was successful, but some features in iTunes Connect weren't available during account migration, Apple warned him. Later in the day, Apple sent another email saying the app has been pulled because of "fraudulent conduct," and did not offer any explanation. From the post: Today I called them and they confirmed my account migration went through and that everything is okay as far as they can tell. A few hours ago I received a "Notice of Termination" email, saying that my account was terminated due to fraudulent conduct. I called them again and they said they can't provide more information. Update: Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I've never done. Apple's decision is final and can't be appealed.Apple blogger Federico Viticci said. "This seems like a major screwup. Apple dev relationships should fix this soon." Marco Arment, the co-founder of Tumblr and founder of Instapaper, said This is a story with two major paths: Either the developer did something to deserve the rug being pulled out from under, something worthy of their developer credentials being cancelled. Or there's a colossal misunderstanding here. I suspect there's more to this than meets the eye. Either way, don't think this is the way this should have played out.

Comments

Re:Do review manipulations really matter much anym

[Aaden42]

The fact that you're asking is why Apple has been taking a pretty hard line lately. Zero tolerance (cause that always works well) to try & reign in the garbage and restore some kind of faith in the review process.

Probably triggered by account hijack attempts.

[Anonymous Coward]

In an attempt to gain attack surface malware spreaders will bang pretty hard at any input they can find. Having your developer account attacked/hijacked is pretty common.

Often this activity is mistaken for other malicious behavior and can get your account terminated.

Security Through Obscurity

[SeattleLawGuy]

Of course they matter! Now more than ever!

Perform review manipulation on your COMPETITOR and get them removed from the marketplace!

This is a real problem, obviously, with the security-through-obscurity system that fraud detection partially relies on. If they disclose precisely why they believe there is fraud, they help fraudsters in the future--but also will catch some false positives. There is also the business case--it costs money and time to seriously investigate and review a fraud detection case, and arguably it increases legal exposure.

Did it make Apple's developer docs usable again?

[dgatwood]

Has anybody tried to use Apple's new developer documentation website?

• Every enumerated constant on a separate page
• Breadcrumbs that don't take you back to the list of constants
• Search that frequently takes you to those single-item pages instead of to the overarching page
• Automatically changing back to Swift mode on every single click that causes a page change
• No way to usefully search for keywords within an API reference unless it falls within the first paragraph of content for a given symbol (because they're spread across fifty different web pages instead of one)

And those were just the first few P1 showstoppers that I noticed. This site should never have gone live even for WWDC, much less for non-beta content. It just isn't anywhere *near* ready.

I'm not sure what the Dash app does or how it works, and I'm not sure if it actually improves things in those areas, but between their main developer doc site train wreck and this story, it really feels like Apple has become actively antagonistic towards developers. What the heck is going on over there in Cupertino?

This is crazy

[radish]

Dash is awesome, it doesn't need it's reviews to be padded. And the author is incredibly responsive, getting back to me on twitter questions really quickly. Sad to see what has to be a screwup by Apple cost the guy $$$.

If he didn't manipulate the reviews...

[mark-t]

... then assuming they are not wrong about evidence of app store review manipulation, it must be possible for independant parties to create such an appearance, and a less than ethical person could potentially use such measures to sabotage the apps of his competitors, since Apple's decision is final, and there is no appeal process.