I’ve been blogging since 2006—before the App Store existed—albeit with a three year blogging hiatus, 2010-2013. I’ve written so many blog posts over the years that I often forget what I wrote, so the other day I decided to review my old posts. Although I’m not surprised that I’ve criticized the App Store, I was a bit surprised by how many times I’ve criticized the App Store on my blog. I feel that it would be useful to collect all of my App Store critiques in one place, if only so that I can easily reference them in the future. This blog post is that one place. If you’re looking for a sustained, expansive, detailed critique of the App Store, I hope you can find it here.
I would recommend starting with App Store is neither console nor retail but jukebox, which among my critiques provides the best overview. That blog post discusses the origin of the App Store, arguing that its historical model, the iTunes Music Store, is the most illuminating analogy for understanding the App Store, not the more commonly cited analogies such as retail stores and game consoles, which I argue are crucially disanalogous to the App Store.
The post Do you want me to leave the Apple ecosystem? is a defense of iOS “sideloading” (a dysphemism) and a response to those who dismissively suggest just switching to Android. By the way, after that blog post was published, Google decided to make Android sideloading more difficult and scary for users, as discussed by Android Authority (external link). Google can get away with these changes because Android and iOS form a smartphone duopoly, so if consumers don’t like the new Android restrictions, the alternative is even more restrictive. Apple apologists often claim that Apple has the right to run its platform as it pleases—as if purchasing a device gave consumers no rights—but by that same logic, Google also has the right to run its platform as it pleases, and thus Google could abolish Android sideloading if it pleased, and then Apple apologists could no longer dismissively suggest switching to Android. In my view, the defense of iOS lockdown is weak if it depends on the existence of Android sideloading, which could disappear at any time at the whim of Google, with no consumer recourse.
My posts Free with In-App Purchase is a sham and Why does Apple make a minority of developers finance the entire App Store? critique the basic business model of the App Store, while the post App Store search is not a user feature argues that Apple’s new developer policies in the European Union, spurred by the Digital Markets Act, demonstrate clearly and painfully that Apple does not consider App Store search to be for the benefit of App Store users but rather for Apple’s own financial benefit, to maximize profit from the App Store, especially from advertising.
Finally, I’ve written numerous blog posts critiquing Apple’s “curation” of the App Store, providing many examples of obvious scams and crapware that somehow get approved despite Apple’s review of every single app and update.
The Mac App Store Safari Extensions Experience
We believe that what’s in our store says a lot about who we are
The App Store does not protect consumers
Some of the apps and developers that I blogged about have subsequently been removed from the App Store, with no public or private thanks from Apple to me, but apparently inspired by the negative publicity generated by my blog posts. Unfortunately, though, some remain even many years later, for example, Emanuele Floris (external link), mentioned by me way back in 2018, currently with a massive forty-five apps in the iOS App Store and twenty-three in the Mac App Store. According to the App Review Guidelines (external link), “Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Apple Developer Program.” Or, it may not. Also, remember a few years ago, as referenced by my blog post The App Store Improvements process makes no sense, when Apple claimed to be systemically cleaning up and improving the App Store? It seems that effort wasn’t very effective.