> I think the app store monopoly is literally the thing that lets the bad guys participate in the first place. Yes! I've been arguing for a long time that the

> I think the app store monopoly is literally the thing that lets the bad guys participate in the first place. Yes! I've been arguing for a long time that the crApp Store is actually a honeypot for criminals. It's a single point of failure, and Apple's reviewers can only spend a few minutes on each submission. Before the crApp Store, indie devs already set up their own web stores, did their own marketing, etc. Apple has now made it trivial for anyone to publish an app, and that includes criminals! Criminals don't want to make an effort like serious indie devs do. They don't want to bide their time and build up a loyal audience. Criminals just want the quick easy scam money. Not to mention that it's vastly easier and less expensive to game crApp Store search—and also to buy crApp Store Search Ads!—than it is to game Google search. The worst part of the crApp Store is that Apple tells consumers, falsely, that the crApp Store is safe. It lowers their guard when they should be suspicious and careful. And of course crApp Store crowdsourced ratings and reviews can't be trusted at all. They're easily faked and/or purchased. Even when ratings and reviews are real, they're often ignorant and badly written, not done by professional reviewers. (As a developer myself, it drives me nuts that reviewers never contact support before writing, and they also put feature requests and bug reports in there instead of writing an actual review of the app.)