It’s certainly not the only case, but it’s good to see that Apple is willing to police their App Store:
Bogus reviews have landed Chinese iPhone app developer Molinker in deep trouble, resulting in all 1000-plus of its apps being removed and banned from the App Store. This is great news for consumers who are tired of downloading subpar apps based on inflated reviews, and bad news for companies looking to shill their products with internal misdeeds.
The App Store is simultaneously the strength and the weakness of Apple’s control of the iPhone development market: it’s the only approved channel for non-jailbroken iPhone users to access new applications, but it’s not scaling well to the demand (or the supply). It’s a victim of its own success, in many ways.
I’m sure that Apple will eventually come up with a winning revamp for the current App Store, but as it is right now, it is not serving customers or developers particularly well. The review system, which Molinker was actively gaming, is one of the weaker links, but there are lots of other issues that become more irritating as there’s more apps available, but no easy way to find them.
