So still wondering about the "missing" $400. Do you see only even numbers for daily sales for the period June 20 - June 29 ?

What I observed and fascinating is that every unit number showing in Trends report from Jun 20 to Jun 30 is exactly double compared to actual sales showing in our in-app subscriptions management system Ah-ha! Well I don't have anything to compare with, but all of my sales for that period are even numbers! Do we think that they've not paid us at all for the last week, or do we think they've paid the correct (half) amount? I still think they've paid us just for the 3-week period but I could be wrong. I launched something new in the middle of all this which makes it more difficult to see what is going on.

Oh wow. I believe they have paid us for the period ending a week earlier, i.e. ending June 22, not June 29. For most of my apps & IAPs, I see numbers in the financial reports that are about 75% of the numbers in Sales & Trends. But in the case of one new item that I added towards the end of June I see only 10% of the expected number, which I think is a "smoking gun". Time to ask what's going on!

I think there are two ways to do cloud storage: Be a huge business, so large that you can run your own data centres or negotiate very cheap deals with the cloud giants. Be a tiny business, so small that you can operate within the free allowances of (possibly multiple) cloud providers. Everything in between is difficult. More generally, realistically you can't compete with Instagram. You need to offer something sufficiently different that it is not competing, and then charge your users enough to cover your costs. Or, there is this popular approach: find an investor with lots of money and run the business at a loss (while paying yourself a good salary). When the investor doesn't want to pay any more, close down the business and walk away. Even if this business model doesn't appeal to you, it's important to be aware of it because it may be what your competitors are doing. Good luck!

Did you have a spike of “institutional” or similarly unusual downloads at some point during the month?

Is this really how the App Store works - you can lose your time and money without a clear understanding of the problem ? Based on the many posts here like yours, Yes.

I fear that your users' existing "real" subscriptions will not be seen in the TestFlight version, but I could be wrong about that. You don't need to worry about app review.

The client then told us to download SpyBuster (on the App Store) which somehow is collecting a list of Bundle IDs or names of all installed apps somehow. That clearly shouldn't have passed App Review, and perfectly demonstrates how amazingly useless App Review is.

Thanks for the reply. I think you need to specify a destination view as well… I didn't need to do that; I just needed to add the URLs.

They have now fixed this. In case anyone else ever finds bugs in the Search Ads website, don't bother filing bug reports in Feedback Assistant. Contact them using the "contact us" button at the bottom of each Search Ads web page.

Here's the legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/contents In particular: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/part/4/chapter/2 The right to cancel by contacting the trader, rather than by contacting Apple, is indeed problematic. Even if Apple does implement something in App Store Connect that we can use to cancel a subscription, we have to send an "end of contract notice" within 24 hours or 3 working days. That makes taking a holiday risky! I expect that Apple probably will do something to comply, probably at the last minute.

They have wasted their money on this so-called pen-test. Suggestion: find out how much they paid, and you charge them twice that much to write your own report explaining how your use of malloc(), random() etc. is actually safe.

The relevant app review rules are: "2.3.3 Screenshots should show the app in use, and not merely the title art, login page, or splash screen. They may also include text and image overlays (e.g. to demonstrate input mechanisms, such as an animated touch point or Apple Pencil) and show extended functionality on device, such as Touch Bar." and "2.3.7 ... Metadata such as app names, subtitles, screenshots, and previews should not include prices, terms, or descriptions that are not specific to the metadata type." Did the rejection mention one or other of those? I have normally used plain screenshots. Sometimes I have attempted to add explanatory text but that has often been rejected based on 2.3.7; I wouldn't try to do that again.

No.

You might think that, but you‘d be wrong I might think that, because I've done it.