s.metcalf

Every “freemium” game with consumable in-app currencies—where it’s possible to spend an unlimited amount of money very quickly—is a slimy scam app; and Apple promotes these heavily.  They are built to employ addictive elements and target people with gambling and self-control difficulties.

This app, though bad and clearly a waste of money, appears to be less dangerous than freemium games, because there’s an actual limit on how much you can spend, and it’s far lower than the maximum single purchase of in-game currency in many freemium games, which can be over a hundred dollars with no limits on the number of times they can be purchased.

The bottom line is: Apple only cares about protecting users when it has little to no impact on its bottom line, or potentially enhances it in the case of marketing opportunities such as with the privacy debate.  They don’t care if there’s a buck to be made, or they would not have added insidious “Consumable” in-app purchases as a supported In-App purchase type.

I just checked the “What We’re Playing” promoted category, and the top 7 in the list were obscene freemium games.  The first non-freemium game was Minecraft and the next one was all the way down the list at 18th.  Of the top 20 in that list, only 3 appeared to lack consumable IAPs.  Honest developers that have a conscience and a soul have a mountain to climb when competing against this kind of promotion from Apple.

What’s scary is how games went from something you paid for once, to occasionally requiring a subscription for regular updates (reasonable), to all of a sudden being able to spend an infinite amount of money on, and few people seemed to bat an eyelid or see a problem with this, much less take Apple to task over it.

I just have to laugh a bit every time Apple pretends to be this bastion of moral decency given the way they promote harmful freemium games.

tommikele said:

"The post's creator asserts the problem manifested overnight "for no apparent reason."

"I left my computer on the top of my desk during the night and the next day I opened it the screen had 2 small cracks on the right which damaged the functioning of the screen," they said."

They did nothing. They didn’t touch or do anything and it just happened out of nowhere! Okay. Sure.

How do you know it didn’t?  Don’t be so quick to judge.

These are such bullshit responses from Apple, but not at all surprising.  Their default response is always: it’s the user’s fault.  The vast majority of people use their products normally and don’t set out to break them.  Even those that are unduly rough, well these are premium products and they should be able to handle that too, up to a point.  Apple should be giving users the benefit of any doubt, but they never (or rarely) do.

Back when you had a real sense of ownership in the product you were buying.  Now these free annual updates and systems-as-a-service don’t feel the same.  Restoring macOS on old macs has become almost impossible as well.

Stories like this highlight how much we achieved with far less capable hardware.  The software had to be efficient; now not so much.

Zeebler said:

Just as the photo above - I only leave random vegetables and drinks on my desk that match my computer. 
These colours will make things much easier. 

Hahaha!

They should’ve made a rainbow model!