Man buys $1,000 worth of iPhone pixels by accident An American man has accidentally spent $999.99 on an iPhone app that does nothing but display a glowing red ruby. Dubbed "I Am Rich," the app is meant as a status symbol for the wealthy. But in reality, it's a scarlet letter for the gullible. As reported by our friends at Valleywag, a Jesus Phone user known only as Lee5279xx …
If someone really does get a grand's worth of value from the app then why should they not be allowed to buy it?
Enough ego-polishers buy vanity plates (just a bunch of letters) and dick-extender cars which still get stuck in traffic just as badly as any rice rocket.
So what's wrong with spending just a grand on some pixels?
If some dumb fool buys vanity plates on a lark then decides he wants a refund should the whole vanity plate industry be stifled?
Perhaps a wise solution would be for the iTunes 1-click to have a threshold and only work for purchases below, say, $20.
How the hell do you comment on this? I mean there are things running around under my fridge with more brains than this guy, and then he goes on to blame the guy who wrote the app, apple, world+dog because it couldn't possibly be his fault, definitely worthy of a darwin nomination but not funny enough to deserve one. Still, it answers one nagging question, this is the guy they put "do not attempt to eat this item" notices on cars, TV's etc. for in the US
Yeh, but he's not just stupid: he's also a victim of the worst most rubbishy piece of user-interface misdesign ever.
Remember when there used to be cassette tapes? And you used to have to press PLAY and RECORD simultaneously before the mechanism would engage and start recording?
And then some utter IDIOT went and thought to themselves "Oooh, press two buttons, that's a bit difficult, wouldn't it be so much easier if you only had to press one", and they went and invented one-touch record.
And all of a sudden it became possible to record by accident. And any time you fumbled and hit the wrong button you ended up blasting a big silent gap over your music and it was really annoying.
For god's sake! It's not an "annoying inconvenience", it's a "vital safety interlock that will save your ass time and again"! And some idiot thought we were better off without it, and as millions of ruined recordings down the years prove, we weren't. Not at all.
Well, one-click anything is the same stupid dumb idea. "Oh, let's make it really easy to do something", when you don't WANT it to be that damn easy! It was a stupid idea when one-touch record was invented, it was a stupid idea when Win95 brought in Active Desktop with it's one-click-just-like-clicking-on-a-web-link[*] option and made it easy to accidentally launch an application when you didn't want to, and it's still a damn stupid idea now to make it possible to spend a grand with a single click.
Err.. ok. Rant over. But it's still a lousy piece of UI.
[*] - of course, then Internet Explorer went and made it so that clicking any random link on the web was pretty likely to result in you ending up executing a bunch of malicious applications anyway ....!
doubt that's a real name, however, I'd suppose the fellow or gal makes a damn good living selling simple, useless, low cost bobbles to people with money to burn ..
truly inspiring !
i'm sure some saud prince, while on a nice $250,000 trout fishing trip would just love a set of ruby, emerald, saphire and diamond encrusted gold spinning lures to catch rich fat fish with ! :)
for $100,000, I will personally hand deliver ones own iBiosphere for their iPhone. All sales final & NO refunds. It comes with all kinds of real and exotic flora, fauna, bugs, alligators, water, mud and more. Hurry as I only have a total of 10. Each one is completely unique
Once payment has been received, I will personally deliver product to you and install it on your iPhone.
Amaze your friends, amuse your family, own your own piece of nature that no one can take away from you, for as long as you own your phone.
For an additional $50.00, I'll include one authentic 16 oz bottle of water, taken directly from the actual iBiosphere. (note: bottles are collected directly from the the site, so shape, colour and condition may vary slightly.
(c) (r) (tm) and Patent Pending.
So. if the app was removed by Apple for this, does the App Creator / Developer have any recourse against Apple? By getting the app posted on the iTunes Store, I'd think that the Developer would have had to follow all the rules and TOS.
If the Developer has recourse against them, then I see it as a nice 3 part scam.
1) Create overly priced app and get media attention.
2) Wait for someone to buy it then go crying to Apple about it.
3) When Apple removes the app, the Developer goes to their lawyers and get some cash from Apple for failing to hold up their side of the deal.
@iTwat - Love it...
Lets see...
"Contents may be hot"
"Objects may be closer than they appear"
"Do not step on the live rail"
Who are these aimed at? For the rest of us 'caveat emptor' and common sense seem to work.
As for it being a scam that Apple is somehow responsible for - where's the scam? The ad didn't promise anything that it didn't deliver, so no 'phony' (geddit!) advertising. Shiny Shiny Bling Bling - "I want I want..."
And Armin Heinrich is an anagram of "A Rich Inner Him"
/Mines the one with 'Vote for Paris' on the back
It's long been my suspicion that Apple users are easily distracted.
Their overarching obsession with glowing bouncing crystals in their UI is a good example.
Seems to me to be a sound business principle to sell trinkets to magpies and I'm surprised that Apple took the App down. I mean isn't "ridiculously expensive" part of their marketing strategy?
if your willing to shell out like a drugged lemming for all the normal over priced icrap that apple curns out who to say you wont go the extra yard and shell out for this and really enjoy it. one mans plastic tat is another mans innovation.
Personally I commend this app if only all the proceeds we given to poor children in Africa it would be perfect!
Don't have one click enabled and don't EVER store your card details on file.
Tip for this guy's card issuer: this guy hasn't got a clue what he's doing and may cause a credit crunch aftershock, take away his card or initiate more stringent fraud prevention checks, phone him after EVERY transaction and ask whether he meant to make the transaction or whether he clicked buy/swiped his card as a result of his lack of intelligence.
I'd be very interested in operating a franchise for this product. Can you make a larger number of cheaper and less 'unique' iBiospheres in order to access a larger market? I'd be willing to operate on commission only for a while if you aren't willing to sell me a franchise license.
It's unsympathetic attitidues like this when an ordinary user makes a simple mistake, which will guarantee that WWW continues to be a bold and free new frontier for theft.
Until we start dealing properly with stuff like this (by shutting it down and pressing charges where possible), and stop blaming the user for being foolish enough to be defrauded, this kind of thing will proliferate.
Well done Apple for removing this scammer from iTunes so quickly. Just like the iPhone's app blacklist, this demonstartes Apple's desire to protect their users (stupid or not!) from malware and scams. Perhaps if MS had had a similar attitude 10 years ago, we might not be dealing with so many spams and scams right now?
PH, 'cos she's probably more sympathetic that you lot.
that appdeveloper is a genius.. :P thats exactly the kind of stuff people buy.. "look my Jphone glows, i can be 47% snootier than you"
the real wtf is that ITunes doesnt verify that you want to buy something (or that such a warning can be turned off) now thats just praying on the clumsyness of your users to trick them to buy stuff.. what is your kid or cat or whatever mashes the keyboard? suddenly youve bought a bunch of stuff by mistake..
user unfriendlyness to improve sales? i think so..
iTwat - brilliant
My vote goes that should be entered into the El Reg dictionary and forever used to describe those idiots that think they are so cool because they buy overpriced Apple crap and feel that ownership of such an item conveys a small portion of the Jobs God complex entitling them to be really smug and try and point out how inferior us non-apple users are.
It would be very easy to buy something by clicking accidentally, ok he's a bit stupid for clicking on buy just to see what happened, and was then surprised when he bought it...
But I was absolutely amazed the first time i bought an iphone app and got no confirmation whatsoever, especially since it asks for my password if i get even a free app through my phone app store.
Up to that point i had only got free apps, so hadn't really thought about it. (although the reciept a few days later with "thank you for buying" and a massive list of apps on it caused a moment of panic) The 1click is ether enabled by default or has a tick to never see this message again box on a popup confirmation message that enables it.
At the very least, i would expect you to have to key in your password to buy something, you know, basic security! Anyone with kids needs to keep them well away. The description of 1click in the options just says it doesn't use a shopping basket style ordering system, not that it removes all sanity checking before charging you! I'd expect click buy, enter password, hit enter, for 1click ordering at the very least.
Which is worse? The fact that he was so stupid he actually bought it or the fact that he isn't even embarassed enough to shut the fuck up and deny everything?
Although all the other one-click purchase thingies I've seen do have a 60 minute (or so) delay on them so you can undo it if you realise you've been a total retard. Though that explains why it isn't a feature on iTunes. No need to stop and figure out if the user might be a total retard.
I'm not so sure this isn't a hoax reported as news.
"Kinda reminds of the guy who microwaved his wet dog to dry it off, and ended up suing the company after his pooch got nuked!"
Yes, but only in so far as it probably didn't happen.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwavedpet.asp
You have to actively turn off the stupid guard to make this happen as reported. The safeguards are all there to prevent accidental purchases but a determined fool can get past them.
I wonder will the developer send him another crazy fun app next month and charge him another $1000.
And then another
And then another
And then another
Everyone is laughing at this guy. Not too many people were laughing when Crazy frog starting making inroads into their bank account??
But then I guess we are all to smart to fall for that one.
Paris because she would spend $1000 on a loser boyfriend to make her look good. Much the same as what has happened here
Folks who are suggesting a Darwin Award.
Please can you tell the rest of us un-enlightened folks exactly HOW buying an iPhone app for $999.99 has improved the gene pool by removing himself from it?
Or do you mean there should be a new award created for an inability to take responsibility for one's own actions?
I think that to get anything other than an honorary mention in the Darwin awards, you have to remove your potential to reproduce, so your genes are removed from the evolutionary pool.
Now a Jesus Phone app designed to do that would be awesome, perhaps in the firmware so everyone that buys one instantly qualifies for said award, and hence helps to corroborate the great theory.
I have no sympathy for this cretin - he deserves to starve for this
However it does highlight the lack of ANY quality control in the appstore.
After just a couple of weeks we now have nearly 400 games - with probably about 20 that are worth playing. Please apple, lets get rid of the crap.
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