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The Mac App Store Is Full of Scams (howtogeek.com)
Over the years, Apple may have improved security, filters, and screening process of apps for its Mac's App Store, but even today things the quality of fraudulent apps continue to not only seep through its gatekeepers, but often times outnumber the good apps. How To Geek did some investigation over this and published the findings yesterday in a story titled, "Don't Be Fooled: The Mac App Store Is Full of Scams". It didn't take long for the publication to find scam apps on Apple's marquee app store for Mac computers. A search for "Microsoft Excel", for instance, returns "Office Bundle" made by a third-party. The app offers templates -- and just that -- for $30. Same is the case with any Office suite application. This might not seem as a real problem to many, but as How to Geek points out, there is one more problem: almost all these apps have icons and title names that are similar to those of Microsoft's, and Apple has had no issues with that. From the article: Let's be blunt: these customers were ripped off, and Apple pocketed $10 each (Editor's note: Apple charges 30 percent on all transactions on App Store(. And you'll only see these comments if you scroll past the two five star reviews that mention the word "app" numerous times. All of these fakes use Microsoft brands like Office, Word, and Excel in the product names. The logos aren't one-to-one copies of Microsoft's official logos, but they're almost always the correct color and letter (blue "W" for Word, green "E" for Excel, etcetera).
Excel's logo is a green X, not E.
Let's be frank here, if you can't be assed to look at the screenshots and read anything, hell, do more than just look at the icon before pressing "buy", you're being a moron, and you deserve to be scammed. This isn't Apple's responsibility, it's yours, and yours alone to do the absolute minimum amount of "research" (if it can be called that) before spending money. I thought this was called common sense; apparently it's a rare and valuable skill.
30% of 30 dollars is 9 dollars, not 10.
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But you wouldn't expect to go into a physical Apple Store and have to inspect the merchandise to make sure it isn't fake, would you? It's up to the owner of a store to protect its reputation by ensuring the quality of the merchandise sold there. If Apple wants to give an experience equivalent to buying gear out of a cardboard box in an alley, that's up to them, but I'm not sure that's the smart move.
Oh no... it's the future.
The Mac App Store is a thorn in the side of basically everyone. The promise was that it would be kind of like the iOS app store and you'd have a one-stop shop to find the things that you want. Installation would be easy-peasy, and you'd get Apple's famous quality control as part of the deal, etc., etc.
The store just makes things worse. The apps are significantly restricted in their ability in the name of safety, so whole categories of applications won't ever be found there (Little Snitch, for instance). The store is as hard to search as the iOS counterpart, so you're just as likely to search on google for an app as the app store. The whole system reeks of neglect. The whole thing feels like a letdown whether you're a developer or a user.
So are scams a surprise? Not really. The store just feels like work that Apple felt that it HAD to do, rather than something that they were excited to do. As a Mac user and general Apple proponent, I really think the Mac App Store is an embarrassment. Either put some time and money and people into it, or shut it down.