Ask HN: Apple Developer Account Blocked without reason – can somebody help? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Apple Developer Account Blocked without reason – can somebody help?

47 pointsmatwiemann18 comments

Does anybody else have the same problem? I have been working on an App for months now but now I wanted to submit it to the App store, but I cannot create Apple Developer Account (Enrollment) because my Account is somehow blocked. My Issue at Apple (Case Number: 101043480563) has been open since March 11th, but no progress has been made. I was inquiring almost weekly, but the very friendly senior Advisor is also waiting for an internal team to give her feedback. No progress for almost 2 months.

Been working hard to get this App online. All the infrastructure (backend etc.) is in place, but now it is all falling apart because of this.

My App will greatly improve knowledge sharing in an entertaining way and will be really helpful in the current times.

If anybody with contacts to Apple can help, it would be really appreciated.

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Perhaps start a small business, get a DUNNs number and separate AppleID, and enroll that way. If the app is going to be making money this may be what you want in the long run.

Also, I'm a bit skeptical how you aren't enrolled already. Apple doesn't make it easy to develop and run apps on hardware until you're enrolled. They require certs + provisions tied to the registered AppID to run any apps on hardware. But it's also been awhile since I've developed without a developer enrolled AppleID.

The app store is a worse monopoly than IE ever was on Windows and should be treated with in the same fashion.

How do you figure? Apple has a minority market share in celluar phones in literally every country in the world, and other than the US, doesn't even hit 25% market share.

Microsoft, at its peak, held a worldwide monopoly of over 90% of all desktop computers (I believe it was in the mid 90s).

How is Apple's (not a) monopoly worse than Microsoft?

I suspect parent poster's use of the word monopoly is slightly off here, but they do have somewhat of a point. It's not the wideness of Apple's market share that is in question, it is the depth of the control. Apps can literally go extinct overnight seemingly on a whim (we don't like this type of tech for reason X, or that type for reason Y, etc). The IE situation was an abuse of MS's dominant market position, but the cost of developing a browser and distributing it for free was high enough that MS had to cherry pick one or two areas to bulldozer into. Apple's cost of doing the same is nil, as they don't have to compete, they can just disallow access entirely.

iPhone market share is very close to 50% in the US. You can't have a successful app launch in the US without making your app available on the iPhone. Apples policies affect the entire market, especially in the US.

If they're not already a monopoly in the US, then they might as well be since they have the same market control as a monopoly player. Also, a strict majority market share is not required for a company to be considered a monopoly. It's up to the courts to decide. [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...

> In determining whether a competitor possesses monopoly power in a relevant market, courts typically begin by looking at the firm's market share.(18) Although the courts "have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred," they have demanded a dominant market share.

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18618127/apple-pepper-sup...

> The plaintiffs, meanwhile, will argue that these alternatives don’t matter. “The fact that they have a [less than] 50 percent market share of smartphones doesn’t mean they don’t have a 100 percent share of the distribution of iPhone apps — which they absolutely do,” says Rifkin.

> “The fact that they have a [less than] 50 percent market share of smartphones doesn’t mean they don’t have a 100 percent share of the distribution of iPhone apps — which they absolutely do,”

Yes, that's true, but it's not a particularly meaningful or insightful statement. That's defining the market in terms of the answer you want. Any company has a 100% market share if you define the market as "things that only that company can do".

"The fact that they have a [less than] 50 percent market share of operating systems doesn't mean [Microsoft doesn't] have a 100 percent share of Windows -- which they absolutely do", says Captain Obvious.

The question is, has there been a detrimental effect for customers?

Practically, I don't think the answer is as clear-cut as Rifkin wants it to be, because (at least to me), the drawbacks of a single-vendor app store (of which there are a significant quantity) have to be weighed against the benefits of a single-vendor app store (of which there are a significant quantity).

> the benefits of a single-vendor app store (of which there are a significant quantity).

I'd say the great majority of those benefits are going to Apple.

There's nothing that Apple does in their app store that a third party app store owner couldn't do. Anyone can curate apps.

As a customer of the Apple app store, I've absolutely experienced the detrimental effects of Apple's behavior. For one thing, I can't build software for my own device because Apple is too concerned about losing control. There are also whole categories of software that I simply cannot have because Apple won't let them be sold in their store.

They already lost the anti-trust case to decide if they can be sued again by customers. I hope they lose the next one too.

I haven’t tried this in ages. Some ideas:

Have you had a developer account before that you might have forgotten about and that might use the same Apple ID? Can you create a new ID? (I don’t remember if you need an Apple ID.)

Have you moved to another country? For example, is the Apple ID registered in country A and you’re trying to enroll in country B? Can you create a new ID in country B?

Does your payment method work? Last September, I noticed that the online Apple Store in Germany follows the new process in the EU when paying with credit cards online. That is, you have to enable your card to allow online payments. Other businesses still use the old method where you only need the three-digit number on the back of the card. Check with your bank or credit card company and enable online payments. It is not enabled by default. Call the phone number printed on the card and they walk you through the process.

Do you have to supply tax information so that proceeds from the sale of your app can be reported correctly? Are you missing documents, tax IDs, W8-BEN (tax treaty benefits, needed for US tax purposes when you’re a citizen of another country), or similar documents? I haven’t done this myself. I don’t know if you need all this. Just throwing it out there.

How is it built? React Native, Cordova, SwiftUI? Maybe the technology chosen might provide a hint? Also, where are you based?

Enrolling, much rather than submitting an app in the developer program is the issue at hand. I’m in the EU.

Have you considered an Android version?

This is the most HN answer ever.

"I'm having trouble creating an Apple Developer account, has anyone had similar experiences?"

"Have you considered an Android version?"

When someone asks how to do X, telling them to do Y is almost never the right answer.

It gives us context and a lot more information to help answer the question - I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask if he's considered it.

How does his consideration of an unrelated platform give insight to his trouble creating an account somewhere else?

I might have to go that route.

Probably someone in Apple feels your idea would be a good thing for Apple to do itself,(as has happened many time before) so get what copyright protection you can get and persist, then sue if they infringe on you.

I don't doubt that this has occurred but it's strange that (s)he is blocked from creating a developer account. Clearly this would stop all "ideas" from turning into apps for this person. Sounds more like they can't verify an identity, had problems with a credit card or are geo-blocking.

This doesn't make sense assuming Apple doesn't have visibility of the app development, especially if OP is developing while not enrolled to the Apple dev program.

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