Molinker is no more on the App Store -- ratings scam results in expulsion
By Vlad Savov 
posted December 8th 2009 7:47AM
posted December 8th 2009 7:47AM
Well, here's the happy side to the police state known as Apple's App Store. One of the more prolific app makers out there, Molinker, has been recently unceremoniously expelled from the Apple orchard due to its manipulation of app ratings and reviews. As it turns out, Molinker has been massaging the truth by pumping out false five star reviews for its wares, and now Phil Schiller himself has stepped in and pulled the company's whole catalog -- consisting of more than 1,000 apps -- seemingly permanently:Yes, this developer's apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.
So the App Store is now a bunch of travel guides lighter and Mr. Schiller gets a "good boy" badge from the blog brigade. Good news all around then.
Might have been less extreme to have removed all of their reviews, forced them to start from scratch, and warned them not to let it happen again. This is overkill. The App Store can't seem to find any sort of happy medium. It's all extremes.
Worthless.
@Parias I think it's for the best. Unless you want fake reviews to become the norm...
Think of it like a pre-emptive strike.
@Parias
A strike that may have completely ruined someone's business because they were being sneaky. Warn them. Move on. This is overkill in an effort to flex their muscle just like they do with everything else.
@Parias
Sneaky? They weren't being Sneaky, they were committing fraud. There is a difference. Despite the business practices on wall street, most people believe that businesses that became successful purely through fraud don't deserve a "second chance".
Only 99k apps? How will the iPhone survive now?
@sweet greggo
If you're having dev problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99 problems, but an App ain't one!
@sweet greggo
Actually if Apple applied this policy to the rest of the catalog, we'd be seeing an appstore with, what 30-40K apps?
Apple is just touching the tip of the iceberg! BUT they're smart not to throw the bath water and the baby out and instead play this to their advantage (yes, still 99K apps, so it's only 1% no biggie, still a sales point until xmas is over).
if the apps were any good, why would they have to rig the ratings?
@Davo Why indeed Gameloft, why indeed?
I'm of course talking about the Dec. 7th "5 star review" spam for Modern Combat by alleged Gameloft employees. Check it out for yourself...
Tie it off, ring it around steve's neck, move to android.
Im guess thats what'll happen here
ha! love that picture.
1000 apps is more than the Palm Pre app catalog.
Oh Palm...tee hee...
@BogdanGC
last time i checked the Apple store didn't launch until a year after the 2g was out.
Palm's Pre is 6 months old and the App Catalog is 4 months (ish) and has 500 + apps on top of that they have 348 Homebrew (some are on App Catalog) Homebrew if you do not know can be loaded without a catalog :) Go find something else to to try to compare if you can't handle apples to apples comparison
@(Unverified)
while it's true that the AppStore launched a full year after the first iPhone came out, i believe it was the first official store for a mobile platform. It was a breakthrough at the time and i dont think it took the iPhone developers 4 months to get to 500 apps. So even comparing apples to apples, Palm is not having a field day.
But my point was that in reality none of these 2 app markets is perfect: Apple's store is so bloated with crapware that it's difficult to find the good ones, while the App Catalog, at least for the moment, seems like an experiment.
@(Unverified)
After 6 months the Pre has 500 apps? The App Store LAUNCHED with 500. LAUNCHED. You want an apples to apples comparison, there you go. The App Store had a HELL of a lot more than 500 apps after 6 months. Stop making excuses for the Pre's completely piss poor app selection.
@Jack phew, im glad the pre is superior in most other fields ;)
@(Unverified)
Really? Last I heard, the Pre still pretty much sucked, which is why it hasn't done any better than it has.
For the first time I can say that I agree with this app store decision. Molinker: You got what you deserved.
I think this exemplifies the risks of starting a business that would always be completely controlled by another businesses blessings. I think Apple was right to remove their apps (really, cheaters suck), but it sounds like they crushed an entire company in one fell swoop. Merry Christmas Molinker!
@cayton
STFU..
I agree with Apple, shut down these losers...
and I reaaaaaally hate losers
@cayton
They were evil. They don't deserve a merry christmas. And even then, I'm sure they made enough money with their crap apps to be satisfied for the run they had.
@cayton
No, cayton's right on. Just because Apple was perfectly justified in this case doesn't mean it's not risky to run a business based solely around the App store where an arbitrary decision by someone you don't know could completely shut you down.
It's a somewhat risky position to put yourself in. And good on Apple for crushing these idiots.
@UnixSystemsEngineer Just like Toshiba, Sony, HP, Dell, Acer, ASUS the entirety of ALL of their businesses hinge on Microsoft. MS could put some of them out of business pretty fast just by raising their licensing fees. Without microsoft all they have is a bunch of parts. If i was the CEO of HP i would be embarrassed that my company is controlled and held hostage by Steve Ballmer.
No OS of your own = No control of your own destiny.
@(Unverified) .
That's not the same, because in the case of PC vendors and Microsoft, each side actually needs the other. If Microsoft raised its licensing fees or even (I know this would never happen, but for the sake of argument) decided to stop licensing Windows altogether, PC vendors would simply move to another OS. Now that certainly wouldn't make consumers happy, and that's partly why that would never happen, but the fact is that PC hardware has intrinsic value and compatibility beyond what Microsoft provides, and even in that impossible world, consumers would eventually (if painfully) move on to another OS.
But the major difference between the App Store case and the PC vendor/Microsoft relationship is that Microsoft also needs the PC vendors. If, conversely, the PC vendors decided to stop installing Windows on their PCs or stopped building PCs altogether, Microsoft wouldn't be able to sell their product. If App Store devs just stopped building apps, Apple would still be able to sell the iPhone. It may not be as popular as it is now, but remember the iPhone sold quite well for a year before apps were around.
The App Store devs, on the other hand, COULDN'T survive without the App Store. For devs that have no products outside App Store apps, they entrust their entire business to Apple's good graces by developing for a single platform controlled entirely by one company who has sole discretion in determining whether their apps see the light of day. At least until there is a sanctioned way for apps to be distributed freely without going through the App Store (yeah, right). If Apple decided to kick a dev out of the App Store, that dev would either have to go out of business or rewrite all of their software for another OS, which is essentially the same thing because in that case it would be almost the same as starting a whole new business.
@John H
How do you figure it's any different? If Apple rejects an entire developer the developer can simply change to start writing for the Android, Palm, Blackberry or Windows app stores. It's the exact same thing as in your analogy, sure Dell could start shipping with Chrome, but Molinker can start coding for Android.
@airmikee
Except that if Microsoft dropped PC vendors, the PC vendors don't have to completely redesign their products to ship them with a different OS. All they'd have to do is change their build process and get different drivers, but the hardware itself would be able to stay the same. And if it went the other way and the PC vendors dropped Microsoft, Microsoft wouldn't have to rewrite all of Windows just because certain vendors dropped them.
As nice as it would be, an app developed for iPhone OS can't simply be dumped onto Android. Palm was smart in that way in basing their apps on industry-standard languages, but that's certainly not the norm.
@airmikee
Here's a simpler way to put it. In the PC vendor/Microsoft relationship, neither side *needs* the other. PC vendors would be able to sell their product without any changes to their product (i.e. the hardware) in a world without Windows or at least a world without Windows pre-installed, and Windows could be sold without any changes to the code exclusively through retail without being bundled on new PCs. Neither side would do as well as they currently do by working together, but if either market broke the relationship, both would be able to continue on without making any significant changes to their respective products.
In the case of App store devs and Apple, the iPhone does better because of all the third-party apps out there. And the devs do better because of the iPhone's popularity. But whereas the iPhone could continue to sell (though probably not as well) without any changes in a world without third-party apps, those devs couldn't exist in their current form without access to the App Store. They could could continue to exist if they were able to port all of their apps over to another platform, but that's a non-trivial task, and not all businesses would be able to survive the cost of having to rearchitect all of their apps from scratch.
Coming soon: ASPF - App Store Police Force
@PATRICKmcnicholl
Nice
What the hell, travel guides copied directly from WIkitravel?!
a single company made 1000 apps?
wow, i'm sure every single one of them was a higly polished piece of premium software
/sarcasm
no wonder the app store has thousands and thousands of apps then lol
@(Unverified)
So if there were even 10 other companies out there that do the same thing and release 1000 "apps" which really are just travel guides or some dumb add on to a core app....then the iPhone's 100,000 app catalog is really not as impressive as they make it seem.
In reality there are probably much fewer apps but thousands and thousands of add-ons of sorts. I personally don't think it's appropriate to call something an app if it's just an add on to another core app.
@Bobbo
Ding!
Do a search for the most common genres:
travel maps
music guides (lyrics too)
image/photo manipulators
dictionaries
shooter and card games
facebook/twitter/google/news aggregators
I think I just listed 1/2 the app store.
@recharged95
You realize that even if those did account for half the store (and they don't), there would still be 50,000 perfectly good apps? And that is 100 TIMES more apps than the Pre has?
@Jack
Who gives a shit if all but 200 are still worthless and nonrefundable?
@recharged95
The other half is tip calculators and fart apps.
@NakedOldGuy
All but 200? Wow. You know, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. I'm sure the app store is so incredibly successful because 99% of the apps suck. Yeah, that must be it.
@John H: Why don't you go count the tip calculators and fart apps, and get back to us on what percentage they actually are? Or are you afraid it might make you look stupid?
i wish they'd do the same with some of the spam crApps on android market!
it's f'kin tedious scrolling through page after page of keytel co ltd ringphoto apps etc.
One of the benefits of the Android app refund policy is that I can get a refund on applications which have used scam like tactics to get me to buy an app.
With the App store, the people that bought these apps based on bogus reviews review are fucked.
@ChazClout
Refunds are something I would like to see happen in future on the AppStore. I know a lot of people that have been burnt.
The other option could be to find the devs of these excuses for apps and steal their macs.
@ChazClout
There is a refund policy for the app store, when you get your reciept email it has a link you can click on and submit for a refund
@ChazClout
Apparently somebody has no idea what they're talking about but hey lets highly rank him because he's talking bad about Apple. uhh durr Apple bad comment?? ummm uhh durr yup (hits plus button) huh huh loser Apple, Android #1
@ChazClout
Am I looking at the wrong iTunes terms then?
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html
Another article:
More accurately, you can get a refund only under one circumstance, and it has nothing to do with whether you like the app or not. According to paragraph 12B of Apple’s App Store Terms and Conditions, you’re entitled to your money back when, “On occasion, technical problems may delay or prevent delivery of your product.” Other than that, you’re out of luck."
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/apples-app-refund-policy-needs-a-reboot/
Dear Molinker,
Son, I am disappoint.
Yours truly.
P.S. You should have been axed after the first crap app.
@Llnx
I agree, but there's a serious double standard happening here. First people bitch that Apple is too closed with the store, too controlling, they don't let apps in, etc. etc. blah blah blah.
Then people bitch that they're letting TOO MANY apps in. OMG one developer had over 1,000 apps, how could Apple let that happen?
Come on people, pick one and stick with it. Either they let too many apps in, or they don't let enough in. Pick one. If Apple banned a developer after they entered a single app, do you have any idea the kind of backlash that would cause?
You think the anti-Apple trolls are bad NOW?
Seriously, Android needs to revamp the market and do the same thing.
I'm glad to see that someone that fixes ratings is gone, but I think I'm more shocked they managed to release over 1,000 apps.
@Starcade
Kind of a double standard, isn't it? People bitch that Apple's system is too closed and too controlled, and then people bitch that developers have TOO MANY apps on the store.
Well for fuck's sake people, which is it? PICK ONE.
I'm sure this isn't the only one. I've questioned the ratings on quite a few apps.