Apple has recently settled a lawsuit set forth by developer Kosta Eleftheriou, who filed a lawsuit in March 2021. In this lawsuit, he argued that Apple made it difficult for him to sell his app, Flicktype, on the App Store following the company losing interest in acquiring the tech behind it.
In his lawsuit, he alleged that Apple exerted its influence as the company in charge of iPhones and the App Store to crush developers that compete with it. He claimed that Apple used exploitative fees and a selective application process to be opaque and unreasonable about why they rejected apps.
Kosta Eleftheriou also accused Apple of turning a blind eye to copious amounts of copycat scam apps that were actively tricking potential users of Flicktype, which was a swipe-based keyboard for the Apple Watch.
However, earlier this summer, at the request of Kosta Eleftheriou’s company, Kpaw, the lawsuit was dismissed. Eleftheriou didn’t comment on how he felt about the settlement, but he offered some suggestions on how Apple could improve its AppStore. He referred to an article written by his colleague Sam Hollister, which in his opinion, contained all the changes Apple could make.
The suggestions from the list include increasing the size of the App Review team, automatically refunding those who got scammed, and ensuring that they promote the top-selling apps. Since the lawsuit, Apple has started to make changes to refine its App Store further.
The biggest change they have made is to bring back the report button to allow customers to report scam apps. Furthermore, they have also changed up the auto-renew subscription system. Instead of following what Sean and Kosta Eleftheriou suggested, removing the auto-renew feature and informing the users of the renewal payment, they will allow the subscriptions to renew despite price bumps.
A lesson to be learned from this lawsuit is that users need to be careful when browsing apps and recheck the apps they are planning to download just in case they turn out to be scam apps.
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Abdul Wahab
Abdul Wahab is a Software Engineer by profession and a Tech geek by nature. Having been associated with the tech industry for the last five years, he has covered a wide range of Tech topics and produced well-researched and engaging content. You will mostly find him reviewing tech products and writing blog posts. Binge-watching tech reviews and endlessly reading tech blogs are his favorite hobbies.