[johansch]

So this is the Romanian guy who was called out for blaming his "family member" for spamming the app store with paid ratings of his apps, while using his bank account for the Apple Developer connection? ... All after pretending to be innocent and causing many, many developers to rally for him, without knowing he manipulated them?

How about we just ignore him and don't continue to reward him with attention?

[flixic]

Let's not judge so quickly and surely. There are still many things we don't know, and we have heard a story from him that makes sense, and I find plausible.

What if he really is mostly innocent? More importantly, Dash app is still great, probably the best for documentation browsing, and now iOS counterpart is restored in some way. Isn't it a great move from his side, considering the circumstances? Shouldn't we celebrate his efforts instead of blaming him?

[anthonybsd]

Actually after a little digging it turned out that Kapeli was a shovelware writer who's gone legit. The whole "relative" thing was fully made up:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-says-1-000-fraudul...

[mietek]

“moveAddict … provides a functionality the Finder was missing, the ability to move files using the keyboard. It’s meant to replace dragging and dropping for anyone that would rather use the keyboard instead of the mouse.”

“Switché … can be used to switch between applications or individual windows, ordered by last use. Switché uses CoverFlow to display previews in a visually appealing way. It helps you easily find the window or application you are looking for.”

“DockView … extends Apple’s Dock and shows window previews whenever you hover your mouse over an application or while using CMD+Tab. It helps you visualize the windows you currently have open and easily find the window you are looking for.”

“iGuard … protects your Mac by keeping an eye on the currently logged in users. Even though Mac OS X is already protected from most threats, iGuard adds an extra layer of security and will protect you from hackers that could gain remote access to your Mac.”

While these may not be the most useful programs in the world, there doesn’t seem to be anything illegitimate about them; in particular, they are neither adware nor malware.

It also doesn’t seem fair to label these programs “shovelware”, which is apparently a term that describes “large amounts of public domain, open source and shareware demos and programs … copied onto CD-ROMs and advertised in magazines or sold at computer flea markets”.

Why would Popescu need to escape his dark and terrible past of writing mildly useful programs?

[johansch]

Let my copy-paste it for convience:

"Gather round, folks, let me tell you a story.

So 5 or 6 years ago, this guy named Bogdan Popescu starts a company called Kapeli and writes a bunch of Shovelware. Puts out a bunch of PR for crap like MoveAddict. http://www.macworld.co.uk/opinion/apple/press-release-mac-os...

http://imgur.com/C2vjkig

All of this is featured on his website, kapeli.com. There in the header...moveAddict, iGuard…and something called ‘Dash’. https://web.archive.org/web/20120409173750/http://kapeli.com...

http://imgur.com/W94bGnl

{edit: Even his old Twitter posts confirm this. https://twitter.com/kapeli/status/24561715939

http://imgur.com/qYSESjl }

Over time, Dash explodes in popularity. It fills a niche and is actually legitimately useful. He “goes legit”, creates a new dev account tied to the same com.kapeli bundle identifier. Suddenly — publically, to those who can’t see his bundle identifiers — it’s the only app he makes! https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qoxumm...

But what to do with all the other shovelware though? Not to worry, it can stay on the other account. Spam some reviews, get some idiots to buy it, easy beer money on the side. Let’s just change the author to “Mihaela” instead.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TO_CAd...

https://i.imgur.com/m70tauN.png (There's our good friends, moveAddict and iGuard!)

During a routine Apple account transfer…he gets caught.

All of a sudden he cries foul. There WAS a second account, but it’s not his! It’s a female family member’s. It was some account that he had nothing to do with. He forgot about it! It’s ancient history!

…it just houses literally everything the guy previously created that isn’t Dash. Including apps such as moveAddict and iGuard previously prominently featured on the dude’s website and PR spam. In his name.

Now both Apple and Popescu are in agreement — there are only two accounts with his com.kapeli bundle identifier. Apple says they are both his. He claims he only has one, and a relative has one. So why are his apps on both accounts, his and Mihaelas?

Did he gift the entire source code and ongoing revenue of these apps to this 'family member' as well? What a great guy! Still it sounds like something that might be worth mentioning during this whole mixup, either to his faithful blog readers or Apple. It might have cleared things up rather quickly.

Despite the fact that his whole story falls apart on scrutiny, Apple bend over backwards and will reinstate his account if he admits some wrongdoing. Stubborn dude refuses to budge, posts illegally obtained phone calls…

…and yet people still criticise Apple and believe this guy."

[sxg]

He recorded and released a phone conversation with an Apple representative that confirms a lot of the details of this story. Sure not everything is clear, but if I'm remembering right, the phone call confirmed that Kapeli and his family member used the same distribution account, and that the family member bought fake app reviews. Apple banned the whole account because of the fake app reviews, but they did give Kapeli recourse and offered to reinstate his app if he publicly apologized and cleared up the issue. Kapeli decided not to do that and released the private phone call with the Apple representative instead. I'm pretty sure that killed any chance of Dash getting back on the app store.

[pkamb]

> Kapeli decided not to [publicly apologize and clear up the issue] and released the private phone call with the Apple representative instead.

Kapeli wrote the blog post Apple requested and sent it in for review. https://kapeli.com/apple_draft

Apple never got back to him, and instead went to the press with statements that did not mention any of the circumstances, making clear that this was their final statement on the matter. Only then did Kapeli come out with his side of the story and the recorded phone call.

[johansch]

That is not an excuse. I can understand why Apple went forward, even after bending backwards to work with him.

(And I'm really not an Apple apologist; please do checkout my post history if you're so inclined.)

[AsyncAwait]

> That is not an excuse. I can understand why Apple went forward,

Mind explaining it to us, I don't understand Apple's reasoning here after they said to him to send them the blog post.

[_pr]

He ran his mouth one more time.

[ClassyJacket]

More to the point, shouldn't it be up to us if we want to install the app or not, not just Apple? They can kick him out of the store, of course, but we should still be able to side load (without this open source compiling manually method).

If Android had a phone and watch small enough for me I'd love to change over, but their devices are all for giants (and have no fitness features and not enough privacy features).

[maglavaitss]

Yeah, the guy's a fraud, just don't give him any attention.

[misnome]

If the app is functional and actually useful... which seemed to be the case when the whole furore came up, I'm not sure what past activity/scamming of apple reviews has to do with anything.

He got taken off the app store for those activities, doesn't change the fact that a lot of people find it useful.

[purple-dragon]

Despite his past actions, isn't releasing this as an open source project ultimately a generous act? Many people have paid for this product in the past—ergo it has value—and now, it is free for use and modification.

[johansch]

He's not able to sell it now, so it is essentially worthless. He is now trying to salvage his brand/reputation by this "noble" act. I say we should have longer memory than goldfish when it comes to issues like these.

[fnord123]

He also used GPLv3 which Apple hates. They even stick with a ridiculously old version of bash (3.2.57 from 2007!) since it had since began using GPLv3 in subsequent versions.

It's the details that matter. :)

[purple-dragon]

Yeah, I'm not suggesting he's a saint or deserves a parade, but I am happy to have another real-world, full-wrap iOS project to review (whether it's well written or not, I don't know) or repurpose.

Edit: My point is: you say that it's worthless, and perhaps it is now to him, but not necessarily to others.

[duaneb]

For a fraud, I can actually use the app I paid for. Who cares about the author? This is a net win for everyone.

[4ad]

> So this is the Romanian guy

What relevance does it have that he is Romanian?