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Apple Backtracks After Popular Mac App 'Amphetamine' Threatened with Removal
- themodelplumber 6y agoI thought this situation was a great example of the tools a developer can use to push back. Good for them.
- classified 6y agoTwitter is becoming the outsourced helpdesk of those poor, shoddy transnational corporations. Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc are too poor and incompetent to run a helpdesk that could actually help anybody, but Twitter can. Twitter should raise a fee from those companies for its services.
- cageface 6y agoDevs should not have to mount social media campaigns to get bad app store decisions reversed. I'd like to see some regulation of all app stores that requires a formal appeals process for decisions to ban existing apps that also mandates that the app stays in the store until the appeal is resolved.
- themodelplumber 6y agoI agree with the sentiment, but I don't feel these are mutually exclusive methods. The techniques used by the developer in this case could easily be genericized and shared out as a useful framework for those who end up in this position. That's a big deal, even if it is a short-term benefit while longer-term solutions are designed and implemented.
- jmull 6y agoWell, it's ambiguous whether the social media action was needed or helpful. It sounds like this was resolved through the appeals process and may have had the same outcome regardless. Unlike some other controversial cases, this one did seem like a basic misunderstanding on Apple's part (specifically the reviewer/reviewers), and not a tricky judgement call. The social media probably didn't hurt though, because the OP was professional and persuasive.
- swiley 6y agoAnd if you don't care about the dev: what do the users do when the dev doesn't mount a social media campaign? Tough luck? What an awful platform.
- oauea 6y agoEven worse, the developer has to pay for the privilege of releasing software on Apple's store. So they're paying to be treated this poorly.
- zepto 6y agoThere is no evidence that social media was involved in this decision. Also, Government regulation of app stores would be fatal for software freedom. If you want to guarantee that the Apple App Store is never assailed by a competitor, your suggestion is a good one.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cageface 6y agoWhat would constitute evidence in this case? Apple is not going to admit they were swayed by bad PR here. The pedantry of HN really is tiresome sometimes.
- zepto 6y agoA report of some kind could easily indicate more about what happened even if they don’t ‘admit’ anything. Without that, you’re just making up an assumption based on nothing.
- cageface 6y agoReport written and published by whom?
- zepto 6y agoEven a report of a statement from Apple would give us some indication. Or a report from the developer detailing their interactions might tell us. There isn’t guaranteed to be evidence, but there obviously could be. The absence of evidence is clearly not justification for your interpretation. At best you can say media pressure may have been an influence. Asserting that it is the cause, is simply faulty logic.
- JimDabell 6y agoIt’s not pedantry. My typical experience of stupid Apple rejections is this: 1. Stupid rejection. 2. File appeal. 3. The appeal result is to approve the application In this case, it went like this: 1. Stupid rejection. 2. File appeal. 3. Don’t wait for the appeal result. 4. Run to the press. 5. The appeal result is to approve the application. There’s no indication 3 & 4 were necessary here. This seems like a trigger-happy reviewer whose decision was always going to be reversed.
- amyjess 6y agoWhat I want to see is Apple broken up. Split them into a hardware company, an OS company, an app store company, and an applications company, and permanently forbid those companies from collaborating or moving into new markets.
- fakedang 6y agoIs there any chance of this happening? Heck, even Facebook and Google are taking too long to be broken up. I'm expecting a minor antitrust fine in the order of 10s of millions.
- parasubvert 6y agoGoogle has a slight possibility. Facebook larger. Apple is not a monopoly and has not been anticompetitive by any historic or contemporary legal definition. So no, it won’t get broken up any time soon. You might see markers get regulated (eg. Mobile app stores) but that’s not antitrust, that’s legislation.
- fastball 6y ago??? Well then I'm glad you're not in charge. The best thing about my Mac is how well integrated the OS is with the hardware. And from there how well the applications, which are well-integrated with the hardware, work alongside the corresponding applications on my iPhone.
- parasubvert 6y agoNot only is this completely ludicrous (the latter part of they can’t work together), I don’t think most Apple customers would want this, only its competition. Making it illegal to be successful and give customers what they want sure seems to to be a winning economy policy?
- mmglr 6y agoWhat a laughable opinion. Who would break up Apple? The U.S. gov't? Assume they do, what is to stop Apple from moving operations overseas to evade the breakup. That would be a huge loss to the engineering talent in Cupertino. Also I have noticed this narrative increasing online. A size-able company/mega corp does something the public assumes is done with malice and the ONLY solution is to "break up" the company. I think this narrative is misguided.
- crazysim 6y agoIt's a great counterpoint to the whole "reaching out to social media" won't help statement that some Apple execs have made.
- cageface 6y agoApple has shown several times recently that reaching out to social media is by far the best way to get them to back down, provided you have the following to make them sweat the bad PR a bit.
- heisenbit 6y agoSadly it is also a great example of Apple setting suddenly way too tight deadlines. Imagine rebranding Apple in a few days to Bananas. It is also a case of disrespecting long term business relationships. It is one thing to demand name changes or functionality changes from a new product. It is quite another to do it with a long term partner. And these sort of things could be very, very easily avoided dimply by a few rules, may a few lines of code and more respectful and mature communication in these corner cases.
- ortusdux 6y agoDefinitely casts a new light on the comments from yesterdays post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25605880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25605880
- oauea 6y agoEspecially interesting is all the people advocating backing down, and how heavily upvoted those comments must have been to be at the top.
- TheOperator 6y agoIt's Hacker News do you expect people to not compulsively bend the knee when a corporation is discussed?
- lamontcg 6y ago"Hacker" News
- xvector 6y agoReally should be "90% of userbase employed by megacorps" News.
- emptyparadise 6y agoConsidering who owns this website, it's hardly surprising. The goal's always either getting bought out by a megacorp or becoming one.
- charsi 6y agoHa. This will help me put the comments here in perspective. This giant bias should almost be the disclaimer on the comment section of most tech media outlets.
- dang 6y agoI think you might be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... People with views opposite to yours post things like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25615692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25615692 (beat you by 8 hours!) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25603650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25603650 (don't miss the replies) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568 (there are hundreds of these...) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23396632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23396632 (ok last one) Same bias, opposite starting point.
- voodootrucker 6y agoIt's just insane that you need Amphetamine, homebrew, iStat menus, and a dozen other 3rd party tools to do what should be part of an operating system's job anyway.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoIt is part of the operating system. You can either disable various power-saving measures. Or use the built-in shell command caffeinate. Or run a muted video looping in the background.
- smoldesu 6y agoAs opposed to KDE, where you click the battery icon and check off "keep my computer awake". Sometimes Apple's design is so stuck in the 90s that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
- jitl 6y agoYou’re being downvoted for oversimplifying what this app does as well as the combative tone. As GP said, on Mac you can turn off sleep timer permanently in the OS settings. The app in question let’s you keep awake for the next N minutes/hours so the “keep awake” setting change isn’t permanent. It makes sleep-settings workflow much easier. It’s simple but worthwhile.
- voodootrucker 6y agoThank you, I wasn't aware of these options. As a teacher, I was often in situations where a lesson would go on for a while with no computer interaction, and another teacher recommended Amphetamine. It worked well and I never discovered the shell command. I actually tried for a bit and never discovered a GUI option. Do you have a link handy?
- X-Istence 6y agoSystem Preferences -> Battery Select either Battery or Power Adapter to make changes to how the system will go to sleep/turn the display off after a certain amount of time.
- Nicksil 6y agoAdditional discussion from a little earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25615186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25615186
- Guereric 6y agoThink the source is a better link: https://twitter.com/x74353/status/1345421211677949957 https://twitter.com/x74353/status/1345421211677949957
- megablast 6y agoIs twitter ever a better link?
- Guereric 6y agoEverything relevant to the reader is captured by the twitter post of the developer. What does macrumours, or the verge from an earlier post, add?
- pengaru 6y agoTwitter recently completely blocked js-free viewing, it's never ideal.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoI just read the tweet with a text-only browser that does not process javascript, using an "approved" User-Agent string.
- pengaru 6y agoReally? Until a few months ago I used to visit twitter links in FF w/noscript blocking js, it would just divert me to "classic" mode. This is what happens currently in FF: https://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/twitter.png https://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/twitter.png Maybe they've stopped supporting my version of FireFox on Linux, and I've wrongly assumed it's strictly the lack of js? I'm not sure if that's any better... since this browser is perfectly capable of everything needed to view tweets.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
- stale2002 6y agoLet this be a lesson to all those people who were in the previous thread, trying to claim that this developer should just give an and rename their app, instead of starting a media incident. The media blitz worked. Giving up would be bad advice. Making social media posts, that go viral, fixed the problem.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoThat advice was valid 99.9999% of the time prior to this outcome. Now it's valid 99.99985% of the time.
- stale2002 6y agoNo, it is really not valid. If you are able to successfully cause a large amount of PR damage to a company, then it is one of the most effective ways to get them to change their mind on something. PR damage is a big deal, and companies back down all the time, in situations like this, where they don't actually lose much by backing down. Maybe a couple won't back from some system wide policy, that is some large initiative of the company. But, if we are talking about a situation where some rando, singular app or user or whatever, gets blocked/banned/whatever, due to an ambiguous policy, likely made by a singular low level moderation employee? Yeah, absolutely a company could be willing to back down from such an insignificant decision, if the alternative is suffering bad PR.
- xwdv 6y agoI hate that the media blitz worked, now every developer with the slightest roadblock is going to mount annoying social media campaigns (tantrums really) until they get their way. Not sure if I like this.
- 0_gravitas 6y agoHow else would you have preferred this to play out, afaik Apple doesn't exactly have a responsive or sympathetic support hotline for stuff like this, perhaps the problem was that this was their only real option?
- JimDabell 6y agoThis wasn’t his only option. He’d already filed an appeal with Apple, this is the result of the appeal. This was the likely outcome without any “media blitz”.
- moistbar 6y agoJust come out and say you hate developers having any rights instead of dancing around the topic. This was inarguably a poor decision on Apple's part. If Apple keeps this up, the developers will leave, and then you'll have nothing to rabidly fanboy over.
- zepto 6y agoAssuming it was the social media campaign, it clearly isn’t going to work with every issue.
- vulcan01 6y agoI feel like some of Apple's problems stem from their unfriendly stance. Apple should have discussed Amphetamine's branding if they thought it was controversial. Why do they feel the need to turn everything* into "Do this or we'll remove you from the App Store?" * Everything that's on the news, that is.
- 8note 6y agoApple doesn't gain anything from those negotiations, and they have nothing to lose by just kicking apps off. The app developer's choice is to do as apple says, or be limited to less profitable android sales People on HN are happy to say they agree with Apple banning names like this because it protects their experience and brand. It's hard to use the iPhone as a status symbol when it's associated with meth
- soupson 6y agoEh. Anything Apple does is giant megacorp against poor indie devs. The scenario you proposed would just turn into the headline “Apple begged us to kill our brand and we told them to fuck themselves” and pretty soon everyone wants a sit down with Tim Cook because they disagree philosophically with the rules. It’s not clear, despite what it appears here, that the Twitter storm actually changed the outcome. This looks more like T1 support made a call that T2 reversed. Not unusual.
- dannyw 6y agoApp removals are serious business that affects livelihoods. If T1 support sometimes has poor judgement, it should be required to internally escalate to T2 before actually making a decision. For apps with more than a certain number of users, it should require another layer of escalation and approval, including a review of other apps to make sure rules are enforced clearly, fairly, and reasonably. Finally, non-security removals should have a grace period of 60 to 90 days.
- tempestn 6y agoIsn't this what the appeal process is for though, at least in theory?
- toyodas 6y agoBit unfortunate to me, I dislike the name given its drug connotation and don’t use it simply for that reason. I believe Apple should remove it without a name and icon change.
- m12k 6y agoKeepingYouAwake is a nice open source alternative that you can find on GitHub
- emsy 6y agoI don’t like your username. I believe HN mods should simply remove your account without a name change.
- Jiocus 6y agoAmphetamines have documented and accepted medical value to individuals diagnosed with conditions such as sleep apnea, eating disorders and ADHD. Do you ascribe also these individuals and their practicioner with drug connotations, maybe you simply avoid them? The name of the application seems appropriate for addressing common problmens described in ways like, > “sleep behavior [..] affecting several of my operations, I have been trying to use caffeinate ..”
- teh_klev 6y agoThis will happen again for the devs sometime in the near future. The app developers should just pick a different name to create an easier life for themselves. The app name is problematic if you're a bit puritanical about naming or saying certain things that are edgy, which infects most US megacorps such as Twitter, Facebook et al. I've been on the end of this because they force their puritanical cultural US standards across the world. For example, in a pub, in Scotland, I can quite comfortably tell someone to "go fuck themselves", or "don't be a cunt". The way we use language and profanity is not the same, intent-wise, as whatever internal guidelines Jack, Mark and friends arrived at from a US interpretation. Using language such as this as a Scot on Twitter, between Scots, will get you a suspension. Personally I think it's a daft name, and couldn't recommend anyway. Not because I'm puritanical, but because it's just trying to be provocative. It's up there with GIMP which is a challenge to talk about in any human company without people sniggering. It's Apple's store, you bought into it, you play by their Puritan corporate rules. And sure I could stop using Twitter, FB et al, but I don't have a livelihood to protect by needing to being on these things.
- emptyparadise 6y agoIt's worth pushing back against bad and disagreeable rules.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoI don't think "Don't name your apps after drugs, especially controlled substances" is a bad or disagreeable rule
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoWhy is GIMP a challenge to talk about? I'm worried because I've talked about it at work with colleagues and I work in the US...
- wadkar 6y agoDidn’t know this existed because I rely heavily on Caffeine when I am presenting or doing something that requires no interaction with the mac for long periods of time. And the caffeine app(also a shell command) has been since like forever!
- tristor 6y agoI switched from Caffeine to Amphetamine many years ago because Caffeine wasn't updated and had issues working on newer OS X releases. Amphetamine provides the option to use the same coffee cup logo from Caffeine in the menu bar, which I use. Has Caffeine been updated recently, because I've found Amphetamine is now inconsistent in prevent sleep on a Mac on Big Sur?
- Tempest1981 6y agoI find both "caffeine" and "Amphetamine" difficult to spell. Any tips?
- yokoprime 6y agoTextexpander and bind Amphetamine to the letter a. Win-win.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago"Apps that encourage consumption of tobacco and vape products, illegal drugs, or excessive amounts of alcohol are not permitted on the App Store." Amphetamine is not an illegal drug in the US. It is available by prescription. Does Apple's statement mean illegal in any jurisdiction in any country? If the app was named something like "methamphetamine" (a different drug, illegal in the US) then Apple might have grounds to remove it under their policy.
- jackcodes 6y agoI’d argue that just naming your app after it doesn’t even encourage the use of those drugs. Might as well enact a word blacklist on the app names if that’s all it takes.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago> illegal in the US I hate to "uhm, ackshully" this thread, but methamphetamine is also available on prescription in the US as Desoxyn: https://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug.htm https://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug.htm - because of that the DEA can only list Meth as Schedule II (i.e. drugs with proven-harm, but also proven medicinal use), whereas Schedule I is for drugs that the DEA claim are harmful and have no medicinal use - and don't ask why they put Cannabis on Schedule I... but it strongly hints that their classification scheme is not evidence-based...). </sidetrack>
- alirsgp 6y agoI prefer Apple's human touch over Google's automated approach to developer support. False positives occur, but at least you have a chance
- saagarjha 6y agoA chance once you go public, sure. If you don’t it is quite literally like talking to a wall.
- JimDabell 6y agoI‘ve never gone public with an appeal; in my experience they reverse course quickly once you get a chance to speak to them most of the time. Sometimes it is like talking to a wall, but that’s certainly not universally true.
- saagarjha 6y agoIf your case is a simple misunderstanding, sure, it's possible that they will reverse course. They aren't impossible to deal with, and if it's clear they have made some obvious mistake they will generally quickly resolve the issue. However, the moment ambiguity comes up I have found that the people they send to talk to you don't have the necessary context or authority to really tell you what is going on behind the scenes, and the process moves forward so slowly that you risk hitting the deadline they give you. At that point you have few options but to go public, after which they will get back to you immediately with a fairly sane explanation of what the actual problem was or perhaps an apology if they were wrong.
- blooalien 6y agoThis clearly demonstrates exactly why "vendor lock-in" and "walled gardens" and centralized mega-corp service providers for everything under the sun are maybe not always such a great thing after all…
- cannabis_sam 6y agoApple is not the problem here, it’s our collective psychotic reaction to the existence of drugs in our societies. Amphetamines are literally medication. Its negative connotation are purely a result of older generations freaking out and trying to control a future they inevitably will have no part of. Why do we accept the fantasies of these old fanatics, who are demonstrably clueless about the most basic mechanisms of human society?