Another App Stripped From Apple Marketplace An iPhone developer gets his application slammed.

[thejode 0]

Tommy Refene, an iPhone game developer, recently got his app, Zits & Giggles, removed from the Apple marketplace. This probably wasn?t much of a surprise to Refene, due to the fact he did a decent amount of mouthing off to Apple. Refene?s was a spokesperson at the ?Indie Gamemakers Rant? at last week?s Game Developers Conference?, or GDC. At the event, developers were given the opportunity to vent out about what ticked them off the most. So, Refene chose Apple as his primary target. Some pretty nasty things came out of his mouth, but one of them was that he enjoyed using an early 1990?s ?Tiger Electronics LCD Game? more than the iPhone. Of course, Apple wasn?t very happy when they received the news. But besides this, Refene decided to play around with his application?s price tag. Over the course of about a month, the app featured a price change, varying from $15 to $400. The day someone bought the app for $400 was the day Apple decided they had enough. Refene?s app was no more. But as everyone knows, Apple is not very good at communicating (except with your wallet), so Refene received no warnings that his app may be removed, or an email to negotiate a set price tag for his app. Even though I?m not much of an Apple fan, I do have to let Apple have this round. Imagine showing up at a grocery store to buy some oranges. The first day you come, a pound costs $5,000, then $1, then $800. Neither you nor I would ever want to return to the store, and the store would lose its legitimacy in the process. This isn?t the first time Apple stripped an app from the marketplace for having a wild price tag. An example would be the ?I am rich? app, which priced at $999, and only served to display a picture of a diamond with the words ?I am Rich?. I?m betting Refene is going to keep the battle going. He seems like the type. This definitely is not the end of the battle. But I can say it will result in headaches for Apple and Refene alike. Stay tuned???

[kleong 0]

i dont think Apple will be so petty to remove the app from AppStore due to what he had said. As pointed out, I think it is the wild swing of price tag that made Apple make the decision. As a consumer, I will be confused to see such big change in prices. I will say Apple is right here to protect the interest of the consumer.

[martvefun 0]

Every week I hear a news which make me think "apple is a <insert here the swearword you like> company"
Their products are expensive and once you bought it you are definitely not the owner. You can do with it only what apple as decided you can do.
It was not so good with the computers but awful with the media players and phones.

Officially (and legally) the app store is still the only place you can get applications but you cannot have every app you want with it.
It's the customer who should chose if he want to buy an app at 1000$ totally useless.

Sometimes it's the content they don't like (porn and stuff I can maybe understand), here it's the price (bad image ? they can fix a rule for not changing the price more than twice a month instead of removing it) or even sometimes because it's useless...

Come on apple it's not because your products are technically good that you have all the rights.

[buxgoddess 1]

This is nothing new for a multimillion dollar company to do it again. But I was just wondering if he actually made a mess off himself. Why would you change your pricing once you have posted the product and then somebody would buy at one price and then the next day at a different price.Apple will definitely find it as rebuking their system and slapping them for not taking control. And that is why Apple must have taken this action of removing the product in this case the game from its list of products available. You cannot take advantage by selling a product at a higher rate than the previous day just because you got more popularity of your product. You can initially have a higher price and then gradually come down on stick to the original price, but it definitely is injustice and unfair to increase the price after increasing popularity.And as far as Tommy's mouthing is concerned, I ensure and am definitely sure that no company will tolerate someone working under them or taking benefit under them and talking against them in public. There are certain rules that you must follow whether you're an employee or a beneficiary. There is no business without respect and care if somebody is greedy he must be thrown out immediately and that's the normal practice that must be followed a company for that matter.

[H.O.D 0]

This is really funny - why would someone want to buy a small game for $400?! Someone actually bought it? I would like to meet this person and have a good laugh I think with that amount one could easily buy an advanced game console. Well okay let's put apart the matter of the silly person who bought the app for that insane amount - talking about apple, i've never been able to afford an apple product so i can't really judge how their products are, but looking at the price one will naturally expect total control over the product. but i think apple has limitations with almost every product. the best example is how the ipod wont work on a computer without itunes (at least on windows/mac) or how the iphone works only with particular carriers. these limitations are really crazy and has given the company a mixed image. removing this app from their store wont make any huge difference to that image, but i think most people will agree that this was a right move from the company's side, but it should have been handled a little better, like trying to negotiate with the developer before stripping off the app completely. and the developer has some nerve too, pricing a game at such a crazy price! (i've never visited the app store so i dont know about the prices in there)