A Moment of Clarity Regarding the Raison d’Etre for the App Store
I’d like to see all the vim, vigor, and vigilance Apple applies to making sure no app on the App Store is making a dime without Apple getting three cents applied instead to making sure there aren’t any scams or ripoffs, and that popular apps support good-citizen-of-the-platform features within a reasonable amount of time after those features are introduced in the OS. I don’t know exactly how long “reasonable” is, but five fucking years for split-screen support ain’t it.
I've been thinking the same thing ever since the Hey app rejection right before WWDC. The App Store is supposed to be a place to get software that has been vetted by Apple but there seems to be a growing disconnect between what users imagine that vetting is and what Apple is doing.
I want to believe this tweet by Ben Evans is the goal of the App Store:
For the first time you could press one button and get an app, ready to run, and *trust* the app, and trust the payment. An app couldn't break your computer. It couldn't steal your data or break other apps or slow everything down and kill your battery. This is freedom.
— Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) June 21, 2020
If we can trust the apps that come out of the App Store:
- why is the US considering banning TikTok because of its rampant data collection?
- why do we need a new notification in iOS 14 when apps query the clipboard?
- why do we need a microphone/camera indicator at the system level?
Maybe I was naive and alone in my assumption that Apple would root this stuff out during the review process. If they're not rooting this out then what is the point of the review process at all?