In 2021, the Washington Post projected that about 2% of the top 1,000 grossing apps on the Apple App Store were frauds. It demonstrates that shady developers may be found in the Mac App Store as well.
A developer named Kosta Eleftheriou, according to a source, has identified certain dubious Mac App Store apps that use pop-ups that make it difficult to escape until you pay their monthly fees.
Eleftheriou had previously found a number of phoney iOS apps that had made it through Apple’s approval procedure.
The developer began looking into the matter after a Twitter user named Edoardo Vacchi complained about an app called My Metronome that disables the quit button until you pay for a subscription. (Apple made it simple to report fraudulent apps with iOS 15, but Vacchi claims there is no way to report My Metronome on the Mac.)
Jeff Johnson, a Mac and iOS developer did some digging and discovered that Music Paradise LLC, the firm behind My Metronome, is based in Russia.
According to The Verge, some of the Music Paradise and Groove Vibes programmes gave proper means to exit, but others deleted the quit option and Mac’s force-quit keys.
The apps can still be exited without paying, but the links to close their pop-ups appear to have been purposely obscured.
Apple is proud of its rigorous App Shop approval process; in fact, Tim Cook cautioned that without it, the store would be a “toxic nightmare.” Despite the company’s best attempts, sketchy and fraudulent apps continue to get through, and it may even profit from them. In 2021, The Washington Post claimed that the fraudulent applications it identified defrauded customers of $48 million.
The My Metronome app was no longer available when we looked, however it’s unclear whether Apple removed it.
To read our blog on “Apple may introduce two new Macs at WWDC 2022 including MacBook Air,” click here.