Blockchain.info's app undeniably broke the rules and intentionally manipulated the reviewers to get it on the store in the first place. They presented it to the reviewers with only monitoring features, and changed the server it was talking to in order to enable sending features. Anything Bitcoin aside, they needed to be removed just for this one fact.
Or they might be simultaneously members of the groups that believe Apple is behaving in an anticompetitive fashion against bitcoin and they never should have had this whole ridiculous app approval regime which has managed to stick around this long regardless.
In which case, that the approval process was gamed is largely irrelevant, because it's ridiculous to begin with.
I agree with you - they fully deserve what happened to them.
However, I have to say that I think their little trick is quite cool. I wonder how many apps on the apps store do a similar thing but went unnoticed by the powers that be because of a lack of popularity.
I'll also agree it was bad for them to be deceptive. But it goes to show how stupid the app review process is. If you can alter your app enough that it wouldn't have passed review, by merely changing an external server that doesn't fall under App Store code signing policies, what is the point of the review? Did they even represent that the server would never change? Is that part of the agreement?
I'm open to being corrected on this, as I know very little. It's just a bit ironic that Hacker News so gleefully condemns someone for, well, hacking the app review process (and not in the "cracker" sense.)
It's basically just a web view, they can't do much about it. I have an issue with it because they're making out that they did nothing wrong, where as really they knew they were breaking the rules this whole time.
Why should changing the site a webview points at, be breaking any rules? The whole point of a web page is that it can change and is outside the client. (See below; if there is a rule, I'd be curious to know what it is.) Maybe if Apple didn't want that to change, they shouldn't allow web views.
I'd guess the app was basically a Blockchain.info-only browser with some glue to scan QR codes and other system-integration stuff. If anything, people are even more justified in being pissed with Apple for what amounts to, "OMG, you changed a webpage that our customers use on their devices, without our consent! BAN!"
Again, I acknowledge I don't have all the facts, and that BCI did this with intent to deceive. But it doesn't seem to be actually against any rules; or if it is, they're draconian or nonsensical rules that people are right to be angry with Apple about. One can still be angry with Apple that deception was the only way to get an app a lot of people want, that has no legal reason it can't be in the App Store.
Many Bitcoiners are mad at Apple; a few here think BCI is at fault. I see blame on both sides, but am more upset with Apple. (I do understand Apple can legally do whatever they want with their own store.)
I would be interested to know if there is actually a rule about changes to a backend server after review, and how it is worded. Or any rule that describes exactly what Blockchain.info did wrong. I think such a rule would be written here[0], but I can't read it without an Apple Developer ID.
Don't mistake to maliciousness what can be attributed to naievity.
The reason Apple has issues with other payment methods on their App Store is that they can't control them. Meaning, they can't ensure the user experiance they would like to, and when things go wrong, they can't fix it.
Apple's userbase is so large and diverse now that users blame things on Apple that shouldnt (e.g. they loose money through bitcoin they used with an iPhone app, Apple gets blamed ). This is their way of minimising that.
Also on top of controlling the experience Apple probably doesn't mind the percent of all transactions they get for providing that mandatory control. Apple will allow bitcoin transaction apps when they can control the transactions to a similar degree they currently control other monetary in app transactions, and will likely ensure they make a similar percent on each transaction.
I don't see this as Apple being sneaky or evil, I see it as Apple pursuing their existing business model, which has worked quite well.
There is no evidence that Apple doesn't like these apps because they aren't able to recoup fees, there already exist iOS apps that let you move money from one person to another without Apple getting involved at all.
For example, I often use my bank's app to move money to and from my roommate. I should note that this involves no transaction cost at all.
First of all. The Blockchain app uses their website with an internal browser. The only changes in the app were links to different parts of their website. Nothing fundamental in the app changed.
Second. Blockchain.info was NOT informed of the reason. If they had known the reason, we can be sure Blockchain would have complied with any extra requests.
It's a screenshot from the App Store as it was presented. The logic being that the screenshots blockchain.info provided would have been intended to fool the reviewers. The screenshot meshes with other comments I found from around this timeframe of users being disappointed that it was read-only, and then subsequently finding the next day that all the features had been added back in. This is actually the second time the app has been banned from the store for the same reason.
Because it's unregulated and any problems then lands at Apple's door to adjudicate so they don't want these headaches because to do so requires setting up channels and systems and policies for the local, state, federal, and international areas of contention but the lack of profit incentives makes this a simple decision.
Add a "for the children" angle and you're ready for congress.
Edit: As far as baseless speculation goes, I suspect it has nothing to do with legal liability and Apple being in a better position to release a Square killer at the OS level.
The App Store exists for the benefit of one organization: Apple. Whether users or developers benefit from it entirely depends on how their goals align with the goals of Apple. It is a very real and stark example of the principal-agent problem.
Your baseless speculation can be disproven extremely simply, and that is by pointing out that Apple would never broadcast a move (such as entering the payment market) by squashing competition, until they're actually ready to announce. Since they're not announcing anything, it's pretty obvious that this is not motivated by squashing competition for anything.
This Bitcoin app was approved long before the recent spike in public/media/government interest in cryptocurrencies, and new ones are being consistently rejected.
The price would be too high - Apple has never paid more than a few hundred million for any acquisition[1] and Square are reputed to be north of $4B[2].
OK, but I still don't see a compelling business reason that having a payment processor would be good for Apple. They can already process payments, how does helping Barbara at the flea market of Little Jim's Cafe process credit cards help their core businesses?
That sounds more like the "Apple should own everything" school of thought. More like what Google or (old) Microsoft does. It doesn't sound Apple-y.
They actually already do this with their retail stores: You can scan products with the Apple Store App and pay for it using your Apple ID and its charged to your credit card on file.
This is brilliant when you're at a mega-busy Apple store on a Saturday afternoon and all you want is a Lightning cable adapter. Pick, scan, pay, show the nice man on the way out, PROFIT.
False. It is regulated. Coinbase is simply ignoring the regulations.
Any exchange app that transmits Bitcoins involves money transmission. Money transmission is regulated in the United States. No one is following the laws. Apple doesn't want another DOJ action. It's that simple.
False, sending/recieving bitcoins/litecoins/dogecoins/monopoly money is not regulated in us. Only if you exchange those for real money in certain ammounts you need to aply for money bussiness transmition/exchange licence.
Alternatively: Apple is poised to take on mobile payments (with over half a billion accounts with credit cards on file) and doesn't want anything to disrupt their plans.
Anyway, why is it Apple's responsibility to ensure every app developer and user complies with the law?
It's not. However, all those customers that will get screwed will knock on Apple's door, even if they have been warned with huge blinking-red letters that it is not Apple's responsibility to provide insurance for bitcoin transactions. Apple doesn't need the headache for what will probably be 0.00001% of their revenue.
I've been following Brian Roemelle's blog on Quora. This seems the most likely scenario to me. It's a huge opportunity for Apple, and they've already been telegraphing their intentions even before bitcoin started getting popular.
I don't understand how everyone believes this to be so true, that its a massive conspiracy theory because Apple is supposedly about to launch their own payments platform.
Bitcoin is nowhere near popular enough to be a threat to any rumored Apple payments platform.
Bitcoin is not the same thing as mobile payments. I send mobile payments, I don't do bitcoin, and I'm a nerd. What percentage of the population do you think really is interested in ever using bitcoins?
Or google doesn't really care, they'll just kick out any app that is bringing troubles when it comes. The play store is already some kind of wild west, they have no image problem and they'll be able to take any radical action they want to avoid the shit hitting the fan without getting the news sites on their back for 3 months.
>> This makes good sense, but it also suggests that Google is more than willing to handle these headaches without profit incentives.
I'm not an Android developer, but judging from what I've read about the experience Android developers have with the Play store, Google basically doesn't care about after-sales support for customers at all, and unloads about every kind of headache imaginable directly onto the developer (including payment problems, refunds, broken IAP, etc).
Don't try using logic here. We are bashing Google Play store here. Any facts, logic and common sense are not allowed. As they say in the classics, we have left the reserve.
This is like asking for a citation for what color the sky is. It's common knowledge and accepted fact. The Android store (Play store? Google store? Idk wtf it's even called anymore) is a complete joke and an embarrassment to app stores everywhere.
Even the design looks like it was whipped together by developers.
PS: The only thing Bitcoin is relevant for is cheap publicity for your startup. Something as ugly and unintuitive as Bitcoin is not going to take off and become "the currency of the internet". Ever.
Wait, so you're saying being a pro on legal matters doesn't mean you just do whatever you want knowing you will always win in court? Damn, so much for that law degree.
Like it or not, Bitcoin, like Tor, and this will continue to increase over time, is associated closely by the public with drugs, money laundering, gun running and so forth. The US government may take a more aggressive stance against it like the Chinese. There's not much in it for Apple to not distance itself from the liabilities Bitcoin presents.
Like it or not, Bitcoin - like Tor - (and this will continue to increase over time) is associated closely by the public with drugs, money laundering, gun running and so forth.
If I ask my mom or dad about bitcoin, they won't think "decentralized crypto currency", but "isn't that what they used on that silkroad site I heard about on Fox News a while back??"
It's nothing to do with that, there are plenty of apps on the app store that are designed for very niche markets. The true intentions are hidden, but based on past behaviour I'd say Apple are trying to lock down the financial transactions on their devices so they can always take a cut. Does seem increasingly likely that phones will become the 'wallet of the future', Apple aren't likely to give up control of that lightly.
I guess one reason is that Apple doesn't want iPhones targeted by hackers, or they know that the platform isn't secure enough, so they don't want to take the responsibility. After all, someone could store million dollars on their iPhone. You can say that that's user's mistake if they get hacked, but this could open variety of liability issues for Apple. So they want to protect users and themselves.
Edit: The thing with Bitcoin is that it's impossible to know who steals your money. It could be Apple, NSA, russian hacker or your mom. Apple doesn't want to deal with that kind of uncertainty.
It makes some sense. If there are bitcoin wallet apps, there will be attacks that try to steal the bitcoins in the wallet. It increases the incentive to find ways to do this.
if a wallet or credentials for a wallet are stored on an iOS device, and the device gets compromised through an exploit in iOS, Who's liable? I'd say Apple isn't liable (unless they knew and chose not to fix it), but would everyone say that? Dunno.
Unfortunately for Blockchain, Apple taken over all legal responsibility, under all applicable laws, in all jurisdictions, on matters criminal and civil, including allegations of patent infringement, and fully identified all developers for their platform.
So you can understand why they'd be conservative about this sort of thing.</sarcasm>
Really as a matter of public policy we shouldn't allow them to have it both ways. If Apple wants to behave as some kind of common carrier and have no liability for the applications they chose to include or exclude they should be held to some kind of reasonable standard of fairness.
I'm going to go with "because they're a terrible, monopolistic company that doesn't really care at all about their users." This wasn't always the case.
What's that supposed to mean ? They don't have any monopoly, they are not even the dominant player in the smartphone market, and slipping in the tablet one.
I guess you mean they use heavy handed control on the apps they allow to run on their devices. But that's like its basic right. If you don't like the concept, don't develop stuff in somebody else ecosystem (i.e don't develop for facebook, google, evernote, dropbox, ...)
Ironically, if Apple was a monopoly, then the government could intervene on that basis. Outside that scenario though, I prefer to avoid shit companies on my own and not have the government regulating how the APIs to their service should look like. (disclaimer, I'm a bit sore on that point. Imagine calling Google Map api using EBMS and XBRL, that's the taste of Government Regulated APIs)
Now about "how they're a terrible company that doesn't really care at all about their users." That's a popular opinion those days, I'm only moaning about the monopolistic part of it (as its corollary, that somebody should tell them how to manage the plugins for their platform)
Google has been cracking down on PayPal use in apps lately. Any crackdown on potential in app payment currencies not tied to the market's primary payment processor doesn't surprise me. Apple and Google are both businesses after all, and they decide what goes on in their stores.
Apple has always been hostile to hackers trying to develop for their platform [1] [2]. The iPhone app store has always involved a crapshoot about whether your app will get accepted or stay accepted.
I stay far, far away from the Apple ecosystem because it seems like starting out with underpowered hardware, jacking up the price and crippling it with a ton of lockdowns would be shooting yourself in the foot in a competitive market -- and it would be, for any company that doesn't have Apple's marketing genius.
I personally don't care about marketing at all, so it doesn't work on me.
[1] IMHO, if you're working on any commercial project -- hardware, software, website, whatever -- you want to encourage user-generated innovation as much as possible. Convincing people to build on your product means there are people working to make your product better without you paying them. So it's in your interest to make life as easy as possible for innovators. Maybe this doesn't justify a huge engineering expenditure on features targeted to developers, but it certainly means you shouldn't go out of your way to make life difficult for developers, like Apple's app store approval with its bizarre restrictions and opaque decision process does.
[2] That people put up with Apple's crap and develop for their platform anyway is a testament to the hacker spirit. Or maybe to the number of gullible people in this world willing to pay top dollar for Apple phones that create a market. Or perhaps because the first iPhone was in the right place at the right time, disrupted a market that was ripe for disruption, and then network effects make its dominance stable (especially over the short-to-medium term).
Imagine if you couldnt install apps on your macbook, I get really angry at Apple for their appstore bull, at least on android and msft phone you can side load apps.
Apple does not take 30% of things purchased through apps that are not meant for consumption IN those apps.
For instance, if you buy movies tickets through an app, Apple does not get a cut. If you buy a computer through Newegg's app, Apple does not get a cut. If you buy a lawn mower through Walmart's app, Apple does not get a cut. If you pay your electric bill through your bank's app, Apple does not get a cut.
I've seen this echoed several times, and AFAICT it's an uncritical knee-jerk reaction. It doesn't pass muster. Apple's track record indicates it doesn't care about money that doesn't "pass through" its platform. Historically, Apple wants its cut of transactions including: app purchases, in-app purchases, subscription purchases available directly through apps, and digital media purchases for iOS devices (cf. Kindle app).
However, there are notable major categories of apps that handle payments but do not incur the payment-cut issue. As others have noted, banking applications, which often include payment and money transfer functions, are ubiquitous. Payment facilitators are no strangers to the app store: PayPal[1], Square's line including Register[2], Cash[3] and Wallet[4]. Retail store apps also don't appear to be affected by the 30% cut: Amazon, B&H Photo, McMaster-Carr, etc. all have store apps.
Also, it seems that Apple has been forthcoming regarding reasoning in the past over disputes regarding in-app purchases, e.g. with Amazon over the Kindle app presenting the Kindle Store. In the BtC app cases, it's the stonewall "game over" response, with no ongoing communication as to how the app might regain compliance.
That suggests, in contrast to other cases, that Apple's current position is that these apps cannot become compliant. Even though the BtC-related apps otherwise resemble established payment-related products. That's an interesting distinction and points to either undisclosed legal concerns or otherwise different business concerns than were raised in earlier cases.
Good point, but all those payment apps have a very specific use case. The possible uses for BTC are much more varied, and Apple may well be anticipating some as-yet undiscovered use that could be disruptive to existing channels for collecting fees (among other things). Allowing Bitcoin would be playing with fire, given their business model.
I'm probably missing something obvious, but what use cases are possible with BTC but not, say, PayPal?
With PayPal you can pay for goods, receive payments for goods, transfer to an individual, receive payments from an individual, do it all in different currencies and transfer in and out of bank accounts etc.
Aside from the fact that the model itself is rather different, I can't think of any practical uses that can be done with one but not the other?
Edit: for clarification, I mean in the context of the parent's scenario of Apple taking their 30% cut of a transaction. Obviously there are plenty of reasons to use BTC over other payment methods.
Not just PayPal but pretty much every bank here in the UK and EU have banking apps. I do almost all of my business and personal banking using iOS apps (just because they are a lot more convenient than online banking websites). Can transfer money to bank accounts with no charges. And I'd find it pretty objectionable if Apple wanted to take a 30% cut of me transferring money into my personal bank account.
There are also a number of simple payment apps backed by banks for doing low value transfers (under 1500 GBP) like Barclays Pingit and so on.
In the most general sense, both types of apps are for "payments", but Bitcoin has unique properties that could allow for applications that are impossible with the above listed examples (because of central oversight, fees, limits, etc.)
I agree that there are advantages to Bitcoin over other payment methods. No dispute there.
But your original contention was that Apple want to be able to take a 30% slice of transactions, and they can't do that with Bitcoin so they're banning wallet apps. My gut instinct says that's not the reason but I'm trying to find out more info before deciding.
Apple don't take a cut of any of the transactions done through the PayPal app etc. so I think it's safe to assume that they wouldn't want a cut of similar transactions done over Bitcoin.
So again, I'm probably missing something obvious, but I can't think of any: what are some examples of transactions that are only possible with Bitcoin where Apple would want to take a cut.
Someone brought up in another thread that you can still use banking applications. When you transfer money on something like BoA or even Venmo, Apple doesn't get a cut.
That's true, though conventional usage has limited them to mostly stuff that would've happened outside iOS anyway. People tend to use things like the JPMorgan Chase app to check if their paycheck was deposited, or to scan a check, not to make in-app purchases that circumvent Apple's micropayments system (this is probably technically possible, but the flow is so bad that conversion would be very poor).
That's true. Do you think it means that the in-app purchase rule doesn't exist, or are you just very intrigued that banking is treated differently from other transactions?
[1] Blockchain CEO Nicholas Cary:"Bitcoin’s use for international payments from family members sending money home to support entire communities in the developing world and for charity fundraising and fund distribution will be severely affected by this decision"
... I don't think an immigrant worker using a $600+ smart phone to send home money via Bitcoin is a very common use case. Pushing such a message makes Cary and Blockchain come off as deceptive or naive or both.
I've developed a basic ticker app to quickly see the value of 1BTC in various currencies. Underneath is a graph that updates in realtime to show you the historical value.
Apple have denied my app on the grounds that it's too simple. The whole point is it's simple. My counting app is simple, this is much more complicated that managing 1 number, but they won't allow it.
That graph which is supposed to be showing the "volatility" of bitcoin has a base in the hundreds and a tip around the hundreds, I think it would've been a bit more honest to start with zero in this case, given that volatility only matters for its relative impact on your holdings.
Can these app makers put their source up so we can build and install it on our own phones? it seems like a bitcoin wallet app should likely be open source anyways to make sure it's secured.
Bitcoin apps hold private keys that can result in financial loss for the owner. What happens if a bug in Apple code results in phone compromise and millions of users losing their Bitcoins?
I hope I don't have to worry about Apple remotely deleting my wallet app. I swear, the control freak approach of Apple pisses me off more than anything.
This is how the app appeared to the reviewers — http://i.imgur.com/pMYRCPL.png
This is how it looked post review — http://i.imgur.com/EsoY4sU.png
The CoinJar app is still around anyway, so it's not exactly a "crackdown".
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coinjar-for-iphone/id7252098...