My recent blog post Free with In-App Purchase is a sham already looked at a top grossing app in the Mac App Store, and App Store Curation at a top grossing app in the iOS App Store—err, formerly top grossing, since the latter was removed from the App Store after I wrote about it. I was inspired by those blog posts, by recent events involving the App Store (gestures broadly), and by my free time before WWDC to look at some more apps. This blog post is about an app named Chatbot: Ask AI Chat Bot, subtitled "Built on ChatGPT OpenAI, GPT-4", by the developer Tuqeer Ahmad. If you're not familiar with Tuqeer Ahmad, well… neither am I. Nonetheless, Chatbot: Ask AI Chat Bot is currently #23 top grossing in the Mac App Store and the #64 top "free" download according to AppFigures.
Believe it or not, the app is in the Education category of the Mac App Store. In fact, it's #1 top grossing and the #3 top download in Education. (I would guess that's because students are looking for ways to cheat on their homework, sigh.) The app has a 12+ age rating.
The first thing I noticed about this app is that its support and privacy policy links in the App Store are obfuscated by a link shortener! The support link is https://tinyurl.com/ which redirects to https://docs.google.com/, and the privacy policy link is https://tinyurl.com/ which redirects to https://docs.google.com/. I'm not providing clickable links here, because I don't want to give the app any referrers or SEO, but you can copy and paste the URLs if you want to open them yourself.
I don't know how Apple allows tinyurl links in the App Store, or Google Docs for that matter. As far as I can tell, the developer doesn't have a web site at all. The bundle identifier of an app is typically reverse DNS of a domain owned by the developer, for example, com.apple.Safari; in this case, the bundle identifier of Chatbot: Ask AI Chat Bot is com.na.chatbot, but https://www.na.com is the web site of an unrelated North American commercial distributor and supply company.
Another issue I noticed with the App Store listing is that the developer does not identify as a trader in the European Union. To see this, just open the Irish App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/chatbot-ask-ai-chat-bot/id6451158502.
Tuqeer Ahmad has not identified itself as a trader for this app. If you are a consumer in the European Economic Area, consumer rights do not apply to agreements between you and the provider.
Apple provides a document for App Store developers on trader requirements and self-assessment. Some relevant excerpts:
Articles 30 and 31 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) require Apple to verify and display trader contact information for all traders distributing apps on the App Store in the European Union (EU).
[…]
To determine if you're a trader, you should consider a range of non-exhaustive and non-exclusive factors (see those listed on page 2 in the EC’s Guidance), which may include:
Whether you make revenue as a result of your app, for example if your app includes in-app purchases, or if it's a paid or ad-sponsored app — especially if you're transacting in large volumes;
The app does include IAP, and as I've already noted, makes a significant amount of revenue (more than my apps!), so it seems difficult to dispute that the developer is a trader. Thus, the developer's self-assessment appears to be inaccurate and indeed illegal in the EU.
I haven't even launched the app yet! Let's get to it. Below is the window I see when I first open the app. Note that the window's close, minimize, and maximize buttons are disabled.
The 99% Up-Time Guarantee puzzles me. First, 99% uptime is not actually very good: it would average to 101 minutes of downtime per week, almost 88 hours per year. Second, and more important, how is it possible for a third-party Mac app to guarantee the uptime of OpenAI's ChatGPT? It's unclear how Apple allowed this unfulfillable promise in the IAP screen.
The app claims that its one-time payment price "was" $319.98, now $159.99, 50% off the (alleged) previous price. I have no way to verify whether the price was ever $319.98, but if it was… wow. I mean, $159.99 is wow too. I hope nobody has paid that much for this app. For some historical perspective, Mac OS X itself (back when it was good) used to retail for $129.95.
The "save 83%" advertisement for the $69.99 yearly auto-renewing subscription appears to be accurate, if you're comparing with the price of the weekly subscription ($7.99 x 52 = $415.48, wow). The "save 54%" advertisement for the $14.99 monthly subscription is in the ballpark but appears to be underselling it a bit: $14.99 x 12 = $179.88, which would be about 57% off the weekly price. A free trial is available only with the monthly subscription, and that's the option selected by default.
It's a strange coincidence that so many of these subscription apps have a 3 day free trial. The app "Docs for Google Docs and Drive" that I blogged about before also has a 3 day trial. I would speculate that perhaps 3 days is the shortest trial that Apple allows?
Again, the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use links are tinyurl. The former is the same as in the App Store. The latter is https://tinyurl.com/ which redirects to https://docs.google.com/.
The big CONTINUE button continues with In-App Purchase. The subtle close widget in the upper right corner does work and closes the IAP screen, allowing you to access the rest of the app without purchase or trial. There are three main features: chat, analyzing images, and removing the background from images. The chat screen includes an advertisement for the developer's other App Store app, AI Image Generator & Photo Art, which has similar pricing.
If I select anything other than GPT-3.5 Turbo in the popup list of models, the window returns to the In-App Purchase screen. (I did not make a purchase or start a trial.)
The phone icon (Contact us) opens an email addressed to helpishereattuqeer@gmail.com with the subject "Feedback for Chatbot".
Aside from the main window, there's not much to the app. Its main menu is quite sparse.
I can open multiple new windows, but the other windows are lost on quitting and relaunching the app. And the main window always shows the In-App Purchase screen on launch; I assume (but can't confirm) that this would stop if I made a purchase.
The app connects to https://us-central1-chatbotmac-5bbfa.cloudfunctions.net when you use the chat feature. This is a Google Cloud domain. Presumably the app developer is using Google Cloud to directly access the ChatGPT API.
Anyway, that's what it takes to become one of the top grossers in the Mac App Store. On the web, I can find no media coverage, word of mouth recommendations, or even advertising for this app. Tuqeer Ahmad is effectively anonymous. And unlike the iOS App Store, the Mac App Store has no search ads. So how does this developer find customers? Honestly, I don't know, other than stuffing the app title, subtitle, description, etc., with popular search keywords.
Curiously, the app may have changed ownership recently. Looking at the Mac App Store user reviews, many of them have a developer response containing an email address. In the reviews from April and May, the address is always helpishereattuqeer@gmail.com, the same as I mentioned above. However, in the reviews from March and earlier, info@nymbleapps.com is the address.
There is a web site at https://www.nymbleapps.com for Nymble Apps LLC, "The Future of Artificial Intelligence", who claim to have "The most intelligent ChatBot." The web site says that company is based in Cupertino, California, coincidentally the corporate headquarters of Apple Inc. The listed address of Nymble Apps appears to be a modest house in a cul-de-sac. (Since it's Cupertino, though, the property estimate is a ridiculous $2.7 million.)
By the way, very soon after I started using the app, it requested a rating.
