A couple of weeks ago I published a blog post about App Store Curation. At the end I said:
Apple claims that locking down iOS to the App Store is justified in order to protect consumers from danger. Time and again, however, it's painfully obvious that Apple's so-called "curation" of the App Store is terrible, miserable, incompetent, negligent.
By the way, the app I wrote about, Virus Protection for Phone, was removed from the App Store shortly thereafter. Perhaps Apple should pay me to do their job for them. How about a bounty for scams? I'll take, say, 30% of their revenue.
In this blog post, I want to discuss a fundamental, intentional design flaw of the App Store that misleads consumers: the category of apps that are labeled as free with In-App Purchase. The App Store shows an explanation of In-App Purchases when you click the Learn More link in the In-App Purchases section of an app's product page; here's a quote from the first paragraph of Apple's document:
Many of your favorite free and paid apps and games offer in-app purchases, which are optional transactions that change an app's functionality or unlock digital goods, content or services. You can find out if an app offers in-app purchases by visiting its product page in the App Store. Just look for the "In-App Purchases" messages near the Get or Price button.
The problem is that what Apple means here by "free" as opposed to "paid" is simply that you don't have to pay before downloading the app, but Apple's counterintuitive definition tends to obscure what is most important to consumers: how much you have to pay to use the app. The range of allowed use can vary drastically among apps that are free with IAP. Some apps can be used forever for free with no apparent limitations, and the IAP merely unlocks bonus content or features. Some can be used for free in "reader" mode, with the ability to open and read documents, while an IAP is required to edit and/or sync documents. Some apps are free to use fully for only a limited time; in other words, they have a time-limited free trial. At the end of the trial, various outcomes are possible. Time-limited trials are especially popular with auto-renewing subscription apps, which start charging you automatically at the end of the trial. And ironically, some so-called "free" apps don't allow any use at all unless you first pay the IAP.
Three years ago, I highlighted such an app that was free to download but could not be used in any way without the IAP. In response to the ensuing negative publicity, the developer of the app added a time-limited free trial. Nonetheless, Apple had already approved the app without a free trial, and there's no evidence that Apple or its app review team has any objection to the bait-and-switch tactic. As Nick Heer wrote at the time:
This is the kind of thing Apple sought to prevent when it launched In-App Purchases as a feature for paid apps only. Opening them up to free apps has created different purchasing mechanisms in the App Store and has pushed the industry toward subscription pricing, but it has also enabled scummy behaviour like this.
The app in question is still in the Mac App Store, apparently renamed from "Docs Pro for Google Drive" to "Docs for Google Docs and Drive", but still labeled as free with IAP. In fact it's one of the Mac App Store's most financially successful apps, currently ranked #33 top grossing the United States, according to AppFigures.
Below is a screenshot of the app's window now on first launch (click to see full size):
You might be shocked to learn that the window is actually floating. That is, it floats above and covers every other window on the Mac, even if you switch to a different app. And Apple approved this. You can close the floating window, but that quits the app.
By default, the lifetime $39.99 license is selected. It's labeled "Best choice - no subscription". The 3 day free trial is available only if you select the $19.99 yearly subscription option. The subtitle of the subscription option says, "Only $5.00/month", the math of which is way off and would add up to $60 per year if accurate. I don't know how that window got approved by Apple.
To get the free trial, I selected the subscription option.
The instructions for canceling the trial are vague, "in your account". This may be unhelpful or even confusing for novice App Store users, the very people most in need of Apple's protection. Adding to the potential confusion, as soon as you press OK, a new window opens asking you to Sign in to Google with your Google account. (I'll present evidence of customer confusion later in this blog post, in the form of App Store user reviews.)
Fortunately, I did receive a subscription confirmation email from Apple that included a link to my Apple Account subscriptions management page and confirmed the terms of the subscription: "To avoid being charged, you must cancel at least a day before each billing date."
I am puzzled by the wording of the terms. If it just said, "you must cancel before the billing date", that would make perfect sense. On the other hand, "at least a day before" sounds to me like at least 24 hours before, which would effectively make the trial 2 days rather than 3 days! Of course you could use the app on the 3rd day whether or not you cancel the subscription, but if you had to decide whether or not to subscribe by the 2nd day, then in an important sense, you couldn't really try the app on the 3rd day.
Anyway, I'm not claiming that Docs for Google Docs and Drive is violating any App Store rules. As far as I'm aware, it's not. Neither am I claiming that the app's behavior is unique in the App Store. To the contrary, it seems all too common, sadly. And why wouldn't developers follow this pattern when it clearly leads to financial success in the App Store? I get the feeling that this is precisely the App Store that Apple wants. How could it not be, when the App Store was "designed by Apple in California"?
My own App Store apps are upfront paid. As an honest, ethical developer, I prefer to be as upfront as possible with customers. Unfortunately, paid apps have to compete in the App Store with so-called "free" apps, and how many people would choose to pay for something that they (believe they) can get for free? The App Store is frequently compared to a retail store, usually to defend Apple's iOS lockdown, but how many retail stores in the world are filled with free stuff? According to Apple, in response to criticism from Spotify, "A full 84 percent of the apps in the App Store pay nothing to Apple when you download or use the app. That’s not discrimination, as Spotify claims; it’s by design". Imagine the difference it would make, though, if the "Get" buttons in the App Store were accurate and informative. What if, for example, the button to download Docs for Google Docs and Drive was labeled "$39.99", with a subtitle that said, "$19.99 yearly subscription also available with 3 day free trial". How many people would click that button, compared to "Get" with the subtitle "In-App Purchases"? It appears to me that the App Store is not doing a good job of protecting consumers.
Docs for Google Docs and Drive has a user rating in the App Store of 4.6 out of 5 stars. However, since the app is free to download, anyone can rate and review it without having to pay anything. I just did. I don't know whether any of its ratings and reviews are fake, but in general the ability to download an app without paying makes review fraud a lot easier. In any case, there is some evidence that Docs for Google Docs and Drive is somewhat pushy and premature in soliciting ratings from users:
I said earlier that the App Store reviews provided evidence of user confusion about pricing, which I'll now show.
Note that every one of these reviewers downloaded the app before writing their reviews. Also note the last reviewer requesting a refund, apparently not knowing how to get one from Apple? Here's another case of confusion over App Store procedures:
You need to cancel subscriptions with Apple, not with the app developer. Apple is supposed to protect users by making refunds and subscription cancelations easy, but Apple doesn't actually make it as clear and easy as claimed. Why aren't there refund and cancel buttons directly on the app's product page? Such buttons could be right above the Ratings & Reviews section! For that matter, why don't app developers have to ability to offer refunds directly to customers? As a developer, I would love that!
Oddly, as far as I can tell, Apple has no official refund policy for App Store purchases. I've certainly searched for such a thing. The "policy" appears to be that you can request a refund from Apple, and Apple may grant or deny the refund at its own discretion, for any reason or no reason. This approach differs greatly from most retail stores, which typically publicize that you can get a refund within a specified number of days with a receipt, perhaps with a predefined restocking fee.
This is not an article about one app. I only used Docs for Google Docs and Drive as a convenient illustration of a ubiquitous phenomenon. I tend to write about the Mac App Store for the simple reason that I work mostly on a Mac, and as with most tasks, it's so much easier to do App Store research on a Mac than on an iOS device. The reality of the Mac App Store, though, is that it's merely an afterthought to Apple, a clone of the iOS App Store, much like the iOS App Store itself was originally a clone of the iTunes Music Store. Unfortunately, 17 years later, the App Store has retained much of the original format of the Music Store, which was designed to sell 99 cent songs, not complex software. There's no such thing as In-Song Purchase, nor does there need to be. The basic format of the App Store is a poor fit for software distribution and does a great disservice to software consumers.