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iPhone Developers: The Do's & Don'ts
The sheer size of the Apple application store makes it increasingly tough for aspiring developers to create a unique and compelling competitive edge through which to distribute a product. Some developers choose to focus on creative marketing and developing innovative means of promoting their application. Others may choose to focus purely on the product itself and enabling features that other iPhone developers simply do not have. However, some developers will choose to bend the ruland purposefully seek to establish loopholes in Apple’s terms and conditions.
Fortunately for the honest developers, Apple has decided to kick the cheaters into touch. One developer called ‘Molinker’ has been banned from the Apple store for fabricating fake application ratings.
What Not To Do
Lets be clear. One of the critical success factors for any iPhone developer is to enable their application or game to appear as high as possible on the app store. Generally speaking, if the application does not appear in the top 50 or 100, nobody will actually see it. One of the most commonly used developer tricks is to manipulate the application ratings and search results from within the app store. From the very first minute the app store opened, developers were harnessing tactics that enabled them to influence Apple’s policies by creating a fake name for the application. For example, an unscrupulous developer may call an application ‘++++1111AAAAPoker Millionaire’, as opposed to the proper and correct version ‘Poker Millionaire’. How this affects the search ratings precisely is unknown. Needless to say it has worked in the past and that Apple is now wise to such behavior.
Previously, Apple had enabled anyone to provide a rating for an application. This rule has been changed as it ultimately defeats the purpose of having a rating system in the first place. This was a change that was brought about by a negative reaction from misguided users and members of the iPhone development community.
In addition, some developers have been banned from the app store for bribing individuals to provide bogus reviews using the Amazon service Mechanical Turk. The idea being that positive reviews create increased exposure in the app store and this generates increased sales, allowing the developer to offset the cost of the bribe itself.
In the example of Molinker, it appears that every single review that had been posted was disingenuous. It was an unnamed individual who approached Apple to suggest that many of the reviews in this instance were fake and that certain users had only posted reviews for Molinker applications. Apple clearly felt the need to act upon this information.
Dont Bother Cheating!
What actually makes this story interesting is the sheer number of apps that Molinker had submitted to the app store. More than 1,000 apps have been removed from the market place with immediate effect. In August of this year, developer and all-round charlatan Khalid Shaikh was banned from the app store for violating numerous trademark and copyright regulations. The unlucky gent had over 900 apps pulled from the Apple store. Apple has been criticized for taking a long time to react to the situation. However, the important point is that Apple did decide to act and take corrective action. This is encouraging for developers who choose to rely solely on the technological merit and innovation within an application or game. Any developer who invests time trying to bend the system and cheat will eventually come unstuck. Common sense should prevail and iPhone development studios and ‘bedroom developers’ should concentrate on creating a quality product, not sacrificing long-term prosperity for the chance of a quick short-term buck.
Waracle Ltd is based in Dundee, Scotland and develops outstanding and innovative applications for iPhone and a variety of mobile platforms. Waracle Ltd also develops applications and software for the web. If you have an idea for developing unique and compelling software for the web or mobile devices, please contact us for a free quote on (01382) 529528.
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