Apple locks notable dev out of his Apple / dev account, iMessage, cloud storage, etc

[mikeymikec]

Apple blocks dev after failed gift card redemption

: Paris Buttfield-Addison literally wrote books on Swift

www.theregister.com

Apple's behaviour is crap obviously, and I'm not looking to victim-blame here because Apple shouldn't have done what they did and even if they made that mistake (everyone makes mistakes), these companies should be more easily contactable to sort crap out like this sooner, but on the flipside, what this guy has done IMO is the epitome of putting all of his eggs in one basket, and oh no consequences. IMO it's approximately as dumb as saying, "I've had this hard drive for twenty years and it hasn't failed me yet, it stores the only copy of all my most valued data! Isn't it great?".

I could understand if this guy had a record of trying to pass off dodgy gift cards and Apple basically three-strike'd him, but in this era where these companies actively encourage users to give them all the personal data, it seems to me that even more latitude than three hypothetical dodgy gift cards is needed if they want to be reasonable / wield that amount of power over their users.

 

[Jaskalas]

These companies are a machine, grinding people into dust.

 

[Pontius Dilate]

That is a wildly draconian and disproportionate response given that it looks like Apple suffered zero harm and the user was more the victim than the perpetrator. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but I am. If I tried to use a bogus gift card to pay for a Disney+ re-up or something I'd expect it to just fail. Bizarre over-reaction.

 

[manly]

Apple blocks dev after failed gift card redemption

: Paris Buttfield-Addison literally wrote books on Swift

www.theregister.com

Apple's behaviour is crap obviously, and I'm not looking to victim-blame here because Apple shouldn't have done what they did and even if they made that mistake (everyone makes mistakes), these companies should be more easily contactable to sort crap out like this sooner, but on the flipside, what this guy has done IMO is the epitome of putting all of his eggs in one basket, and oh no consequences. IMO it's approximately as dumb as saying, "I've had this hard drive for twenty years and it hasn't failed me yet, it stores the only copy of all my most valued data! Isn't it great?".

I could understand if this guy had a record of trying to pass off dodgy gift cards and Apple basically three-strike'd him, but in this era where these companies actively encourage users to give them all the personal data, it seems to me that even more latitude than three hypothetical dodgy gift cards is needed if they want to be reasonable / wield that amount of power over their users.

Your analysis doesn't align well with the article.
First off, a lot of consumers have structured their online lives within the two major ecosystems: Apple and Google. We can argue the propriety of this, but I wouldn't blame victims for locking themselves up in these walled gardens. That is Nothing like entrusting your important data to an ancient hard drive.

The focus of the article is semi-weird. Not that I follow Apple all that closely any more, but I've never heard of this evangelist or his iBiz app. The mention of Objective-C is a bit funny, but I guess that's meant to bolster his long-term chops. If he's already made up his mind, then what's the point of all this? Just to shame Apple? They're way too big to care.

"I will leave as fast as I can even if this is fixed," he told us. "I do mean that literally."

Finally, I agree that Apple is in the wrong, but notice he's engaged with a "senior adviser" and now the "Executive Relations" team. Yet he blames the kerfuffle on automation and lack of ability to engage with humans. Good luck trying to get a human being from Google on the phone, if you ever run into a customer service issue with Android services. (Same with Facebook IIRC.)

 

[mikeymikec]

Your analysis doesn't align well with the article.
First off, a lot of consumers have structured their online lives within the two major ecosystems: Apple and Google. We can argue the propriety of this, but I wouldn't blame victims for locking themselves up in these walled gardens. That is Nothing like entrusting your important data to an ancient hard drive.

... because?

 

[manly]

... because?

You're an IT pro, do I really need to explain it?

There are billions of consumers around the world that are effectively all-in on one or both ecosystems: Apple and Google. You said you're not looking to victim-blame, and I agree with that sentiment. We both understand there's a lot of implicit trust involved with one Apple ID to rule them all, but I'm not faulting consumers for not being IT pros.

So quite obviously, simply trusting your iPhone/Mac/Apple services will work reliably is nothing like having valuable data stored on a 20-year-old HD with no backup. Out of a billion Apple end users, how often does this nightmare scenario of getting a full ban hammer occur? It's a lot less frequent than HD failure rates.

If you're arguing that Dr. Buttfield-Addison is a smart developer, so HE should know better. Then, I guess? In the article, he claims it's against Developer program ToS to have dual Apple accounts for personal and biz use.

 

[mikeymikec]

You're an IT pro, do I really need to explain it?

There are billions of consumers around the world that are effectively all-in on one or both ecosystems: Apple and Google. You said you're not looking to victim-blame, and I agree with that sentiment. We both understand there's a lot of implicit trust involved with one Apple ID to rule them all, but I'm not faulting consumers for not being IT pros.

So quite obviously, simply trusting your iPhone/Mac/Apple services will work reliably is nothing like having valuable data stored on a 20-year-old HD with no backup. Out of a billion Apple end users, how often does this nightmare scenario of getting a full ban hammer occur? It's a lot less frequent than HD failure rates.

My argument has nothing to do with failure rates, it has everything to do with a single point of failure: Company says no, or there's a problem accessing the data on the hard drive. Assuming that you're not a person who wields some serious power and influence that the cloud provider might actually be afraid of getting on the wrong side of, then actually the hard drive problem gives one more options. You could take it to a tech to look at, or even a data recovery company if you have the money.

If you're arguing that Dr. Buttfield-Addison is a smart developer, so HE should know better. Then, I guess? In the article, he claims it's against Developer program ToS to have dual Apple accounts for personal and biz use.

TBH I think anyone with sufficient wisdom should recognise the potential danger of a single point of failure, but I am astonished that someone who is evidently an IT pro for likely longer than I have been and also has likely lost data before would trust all their data to a single point of failure scenario. I guess he's been drinking the Apple kool-aid for a little too long.

 

[manly]

We'll just agree to disagree. IMHO you're being unfair at not victim-blaming, but then victim-blaming.

Just for example, I've been using Gmail for about 20 years. Most of my online logins reference that email address. That's a pretty big single point of failure if I was suddenly banned or locked out of Google. Am I going to do anything to mitigate that? No, I don't plan to have extra email accounts just to "load balance" the risk. Segregating personal and professional use cases isn't a bad idea, so perhaps Apple Developer ToS is part of the problem here.

AFAICT Apple made a huge mistake here, and hopefully they ultimately fix it. I don't feel this is a good example of blaming the end user for "putting all his eggs into one basket."

I guess this dev is saying Apple has permanently broken his trust, so he wants access restored just to recover his stuff, before he migrates off the platform. Can't fault him if that's the game plan.

 

[mikeymikec]

That's a pretty big single point of failure if I was suddenly banned or locked out of Google. Am I going to do anything to mitigate that?

If you're not going to do *anything* to mitigate that risk despite identifying it in advance, then surely you need to be ready to accept that much of the blame should the situation occur.

We'll just agree to disagree. IMHO you're being unfair at not victim-blaming, but then victim-blaming.

IMO victim-blaming is a situation involving two facets:

1 - Requiring that the victim perpetually lives in a locked-down security setup rather than being able to live their lives like everyone else can.
2 - Solely blaming the victim when there is a clear perpetrator of the event.

I don't expect that some random octogenarian who recently got a smartphone to fully understand that if their setup encounters problems then they're very unlikely to get human assistance from a big-name cloud provider like Apple, Microsoft or Google. I think though that someone who has had a smartphone for say a few years and/or a bit of experience in trying to interact with medium/large companies in general should have given thought to what happens should something go wrong.

 

[manly]

Quite frankly, you do you.
Most users of tech, even the savvy "pros," are content using the services without game planning for ultra rare situations that could cause a hell of a lot of grief. Failure rates absolutely matter as to how we plan and live our lives.

 

[mikeymikec]

*shrugs* I'm pretty sure the standard advice given to anyone here that asks is, "if you have data that you don't want to lose, you've got to have more than one copy of it on another device", whether they're running a brand-new high-end NVMe drive or whatever age spinning rust.

I'm also fairly sure that anyone here who suggested that a brand-new high-end NVMe "will never fail, so don't bother backing up to protect against hardware failure" would get a verbal slap upside the head.

 

[mikeymikec]

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple …

hey.paris

All fixed apparently. The big question is, would it have been fixed if he hadn't gone public. Attached to that question is whether Apple and others have any kind of system for internally flagging a situation like this as "a higher-up person ought to check this over to make sure that this is our company's position".

The other point that's not clear to me is what kind of timeline we're talking about from start to finish. On one hand, I can see a situation like this potentially playing out for months, yet if someone stored all their stuff in one cloud location and gets denied access to it (does this guy stop getting any texts if he's locked out of Apple Messages?), I can see that for a heavily-online person that this could turn into a disaster in a matter of days.

 

[lxskllr]

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple …

hey.paris

All fixed apparently. The big question is, would it have been fixed if he hadn't gone public. Attached to that question is whether Apple and others have any kind of system for internally flagging a situation like this as "a higher-up person ought to check this over to make sure that this is our company's position".

The other point that's not clear to me is what kind of timeline we're talking about from start to finish. On one hand, I can see a situation like this potentially playing out for months, yet if someone stored all their stuff in one cloud location and gets denied access to it (does this guy stop getting any texts if he's locked out of Apple Messages?), I can see that for a heavily-online person that this could turn into a disaster in a matter of days.

Helps a lot when you have some kind of notoriety and cred. I wonder if I'd have the account back it happened to me?

 

[manly]

Helps a lot when you have some kind of notoriety and cred. I wonder if I'd have the account back it happened to me?

well you wouldn't, because you don't touch Apple's walled garden. 😛

Not to defend Apple, because they were clearly in the wrong here, but they spent numerous human hours before fixing this unfortunate mess. Try to coax that level of customer care out of Google or Facebook if something goes wrong.

The only thing left to see is whether Dr. Paris actually quits Apple as he said he would.