There are Mac apps that force users to pay

There are shady Mac apps that make users pay money for something you really don’t want.

Some apps cannot be trusted. We all have experience with that. But Apple prides itself on having designed such a strict system that these deceptive apps don’t get in. That turns out not to be the case at all.

Mac apps that force users to pay

The Mac App Store is therefore not completely watertight for these apps. This while the CEO of the company Tim Cook said last year that the assessment process was very good. And that if it weren’t for this, the store would be a ‘toxic mess’. Last year, when The Washington Post ran a report about this, we knew it wasn’t quite true. It stated that about two percent of the 1,000 most profitable apps in the Apple App store was a form of fraud.

Now, The Verge reports that a developer named Kosta Eleftheriou has been looking at questionable apps in the Mac App Store. These use popups that make it difficult to exit unless you pay their subscription fee. Of course you don’t want that and it’s just super annoying. Eleftheriou had also previously identified a number of iOS scam apps that had made it through Apple’s review process. He has a good track record.

Assessment Process

So apps have passed the strict assessment of Apple, while that is actually not allowed. The developer began investigating the situation after a Twitter user named Edoardo Vacchi posted. This was about an app called My Metronome that disables the Quit option until you pay for a subscription. Apple made it easier to report scam apps on iOS 15, but Vacchi said My Metronome on Mac could not be reported.