Apple’s still not catching scammy apps, and this time they’re on the Mac

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A new crop of shady apps being peddled through the App Store has once again brought attention to the fact that scam app hunter / developer Kosta Eleftheriou is known for catching egregious scam that make it past Apple's review process. This time they're on the Mac, and they're using pop-ups that make it difficult to quit an app without agreeing to outrageous subscription prices.

The app that started the hunt is called My Metronome. The app locks up and won't let you quit it unless you agree to a monthly subscription, according to Vacchi, Eleftheriou, and user reviews. It can be forced to quit. The developer has been experimenting with various techniques over the years in order to prevent people from closing the paywall.

My Metronome was removed from the store after Eleftheriou wrote about it. The link is no longer available in my region when I try to open it. To be clear, you shouldn't try to download it or any of the apps we're about to talk about. Apple didn't respond to The Verge's request for comment about whether it was the one to take the app down or how it passed App Review.

The story doesn't end there. Jeff Johnson discovered that the company that made the metronome app had a connection to another App Store developer. The privacy policies listed on both websites say that they are registered at the same address, and both mention the same legal entity.

We downloaded the entire catalogue of Mac apps from the Mac App Store, after we decided to test these apps ourselves. All of them had an immediate pop-up asking for money in the form of a recurring subscription, usually around the $10-a-month price point. You could quit the apps with the menu bar or by pressing Command+Q.

The developer greyed out the quit option on the menu bar and didn't allow you to press the red close button. I couldn't use keyboard shortcuts because they stayed open even when I tried to use them.

pic.twitter.com/vt214Pk9od

— Mitchell (@strawberrywell) April 16, 2022

Even if you don't know how to force quit, there are other ways to close the apps even if you don't know how to. Music Paradise Player has a button on its offer screen that you can press if you want to quit the app. There is a button in the tool box that does the same thing. It is by far the worst way to hide it when it comes to All To MP3 Convertor. There is a piece of text that says "continue with the limited edition" nestled between other pieces of text.

The fact that a savvy user could close these apps doesn't excuse their existence on the store. App Review should have tried them out and rejected them for violating Apple guidelines. It's frustrating to see these apps slip through Apple's net when there are plenty of other examples where developers get dinged for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

Apple has let many scammy apps slip through the cracks. An app that won't work unless you give it a good review is one of the things E leftheriou discovered. The company updated its policies in an attempt to make building scammy apps less appealing, but it is falling down on actually implementing those rules.

Apple continues to argue that it should only be possible for owners of the device to install apps from its store. The company is against legislation that would force it to allow sideloading, or installing apps from other sources, saying that the lack of an App Store monopoly would cause users to all sorts of scam and malware.

There is no obvious way to report the apps that we tested from the Mac App Store. My Mac is up to date and I can't find the "Report a Problem" button on the App Store. I can report apps by going to report aproblem.apple.com and signing into my Apple account, but that's not something most people will do.