Take, for example, the case of iOS developer Anton Sinelnikov. By looking at the screenshot taken a few weeks ago, you are faced with an incredible feat. Sinelnikov has managed to create not just one popular iOS app, but several! Hits like Plants vs. Zombies, Temple Run, Tiny Wings and Angry Birds, all coming from one developer!

Oh. Wait a second. My mistake, it turns out that instead of coming up with original ideas, Sinelnikov takes a different strategy. He copies other applications, takes a similar name, and then forces the application into the Top 100 list, where users mistake it for the original app. After a day or so, Apple notices that these apps aren’t actually providing they promise and kick the apps out, but not before users spend tens of thousands of dollars on the apps – money that the developers get to keep, as users rarely ask for a refund.

Of course, this wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was one developer, but the problem is that close to a dozen scam apps have made their way into the Top lists on the iOS App Store, netting a veritable fortune for the scammers. Some developers have been pointing this out for a while, asking Apple to fix the situation and be proactive. Apple has yet to respond with the needed force.

We honestly thought we had satisfied all of Apple’s complaints about Air Dictate. But what we failed to anticipate is that they might just totally make up an excuse to reject Air Dictate 2.0, for the sheer sport of it.

Drafting this one for 2014, because we like to write our blog posts a couple years early at Impending. Let’s hope I’ll never have to dig it up again.

As we’ve learned from Apple’s latest earnings call, App Store revenue growth for developers has begun to stall and slip behind device sales, resulting in many beloved indie studios closing shop or selling to larger companies, folding to the pressure and tighter profit margins.

Considering the past two years with hundreds of scams, fraud apps, hoaxes, and clones that have hit the top of the charts, it’s no surprise the atmosphere in 2014 among both App Store customers and app developers can only be described as cynical.

Most significantly, what we once took for granted before 2012, the “impulse buy”, has largely evaporated. Consumer trust in apps is now completely broken, and even customer reviews can’t be trusted due to more and more elaborately sleazy services for hire to game the system. In this fallout, we have come to understand how important the impulse buy was in a market environment dominated by rock bottom pricing. Developers have raised app pricing to compensate, kicking into effect a feedback loop resulting in sustaining revenue (for now) but plummeting sales, reach and cultural relevance for popular apps.

Customers have also in turn begun to rely more and more heavily on existing giant brands, and are avoiding less trustworthy upstarts, independent developers and studios, and apps that stray from the familiar. As a result innovation in the App Store is in a slow death spiral.

I remember early in 2012, which we can now recognize as the peak of an App Store bubble, when what felt like a utopia took a distinct left turn for the worse with the first wave of scams. Now that we’re stuck in this hole, the road to recovery, if it exists at all, will be painful and take years of education and pro-active improvements from Apple.

Rovio Mobile learned from the music industry's mistakes when deciding how to deal with piracy of its Angry Birds games and merchandise, chief executive Mikael Hed told the Midem conference in Cannes this morning.

"We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products," said Hed.

"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy."

Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans.

When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."

Following up on my article about the best Mac apps I used in 2010, here are some of the best hybrid "Mac and iOS apps" I used in 2010. This wasn't an attempt to come up with a specific number, just the results of some careful reflection.

You may wonder why some apps appear on this list instead of the Mac list. For example, Dropbox has an iOS app, why not add it here? Because my primary use of Dropbox is on the Mac. Yes I use it with iOS, but it's usually through another app that is syncing back to my Mac. On the other hand, using OmniFocus for iPad (our review) led to me using OmniFocus for Mac more, so I put OmniFocus on this list.

All that is to say, these are my distinctions, and you are free to disagree with them.