Not Muse in the App Store
The Muse from Meta app description says at the beginning, “Muse is your personal AI agent that gets things done, always working on what matters to you.” The Muse AI app description says at the beginning, “Muse is your professional AI agent that gets work done, always helping move important tasks forward.” Near the end, the Muse from Meta app description has the heading “SMART, BUT STILL LEARNING.” Near the end, the Muse AI app description has the heading “POWERFUL, BUT STILL LEARNING.”
In other words, Muse AI is a blatant copy of Muse from Meta, the latter of which is currently the #1 iOS App Store download in the United States. I don’t know where Muse AI ranks in the iOS App Store, but I do know that it’s currently the #20 Mac App Store download in the US.
And the real Muse app isn’t in the Mac App Store, so it has no competition.
By the way, I’d also like to draw your attention to the #11 Mac App Store download, as shown in my screenshot above: App for Instagram º. Yes, the app name includes the º character, a phenomenon I’ve written about before.
[…]
The top search result for “VLC” in the Mac App Store is Video Player for VLC, developed by muhammad faisal jabbar, not by VideoLAN. VLC for Mac is distributed outside the Mac App Store. You may notice a similarity between the icon of the official VLC app in the iOS App Store and the icon of Video Player for VLC.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-29): John Gruber:
“Muse AI” is now gone, but “App for Instagram °” and “Video Player for VLC” are both still there.
The Reddit commenter claims that the scams receiving public attention are “the tip of the iceberg from a limited, outsider perspective,” which is an accurate metaphor, yet the commenter and I have dramatically different interpretations of that metaphor. For the commenter, the iceberg represents the vast number of scams allegedly caught by Apple app review but not seen by the public; for me, the iceberg represents the vast number of scams not caught by Apple app review and not seen by the public either. To put the argument another way, the commenter appears to assume that the majority of scams in the App Store receive widespread public attention, in blog posts such as mine or in the news media, so the relatively small number of stories we hear is indicative of a relatively small number of scams in the App Store, whereas my own impression is that the vast majority of scams in the App Store do not receive widespread public attention. Scam hunting is not my job, merely an occasional hobby. It’s so easy for me to find scams, they practically fall into my lap whenever I look. I could spend all day every day finding and listing App Store scams, if I were sufficiently motivated (I’m not). You would think that someone working for Apple would be sufficiently motivated, by a paycheck, to spend all day every day finding and listing and most importantly removing App Store scams, but I’ve seen no evidence of it.
I think Johnson is right about the iceberg. Most of the scams that get publicity are at the top of the charts. One view is that all the scam apps that Apple misses end up being popular. What are the odds? The other is that we notice them because they’re popular and that there’s also a vast number of deceitful or dangerous apps lurking.
Speaking of App Store shortcomings, I really hate when I want to see how much an app costs and I get this impenetrable list of IAP options. It’s impossible to know without installing and opening the app what the payments options are. Be great if Apple helped make this clearer—which options are actually available? What are their various plans (monthly, weekly, etc.)?
17 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Incredible. "App for Team Meetings" with a copycat MS Teams logo is #2 Top Free App on the Mac App Store. #10 and #11 are both "App for Facebook". What a wasteland.
Absolutely mind-boggling.
Really puts the lie to Cupertino’s repeated claims about the reliability and trustworthiness of their app stores. Given their legal fights against Epic, the EU, etc., why wouldn’t Apple put even a little bit of effort into keeping an eye on scam apps?
Oh right, they get 30% of that sweet, sweet scam revenue!
I wonder what the user actually gets if they download these scam apps? Does it actually do anything functional? If not I imagine people will just immediately uninstall it. And being that they're sandboxed they *presumably* can't wreck too much havoc, other than possibly convincing a naive user to pay for a worthless subscription. Is that the whole scam? Just convince one out of a thousand of the people who get tricked into downloading it to start a subscription and count on them being too inept to stop it?
This one review for "App for Instagram º" gives some insight:
"It took over my screen and asked for money without any options to close the pop up windows. Wouldn’t even respond when I clicked the “Quit App.”. I had to go around and delete the app quickly to just gain access to my screen again."
@Bri I don’t think sandbox protections mean that much when the scammer can just convince the user to grant permission for certain folders or system services. That said, mostly likely these apps are after subscriptions.
Many open source apps are victims of identity theft in Apple's app stores. In at least one case known to me, Apple refused to remove an iOS scam app ripping off a macOS open source app without a legitimate trademark assertion from the OSS project (which is not incorporated or otherwise organized). One would think that Apple would want to protect their own customers from fraud. Shocking but unsurprising given Apple's long history on this subject.
> mostly likely these apps are after subscriptions
Yeah, all of the ones I've seen are "Free · In-App Purchases". They try to coerce users into paying for a subscription.
What I don't understand is why Apple, the 3 Trillion dollar behemoth, just doesn't call up Jeff Johnson at this point and make him a deal, "We'll pay you $200K/yr and give you the power to police this, from home… have at it."
Just goes to show how completely out to lunch the entire exec team involved with the App Stores is—all the way up to Cook/Ternus. Because there can't be any other excuse as this point, these scam apps are NOT difficult to discover… all they'd need to be doing is glancing at the Top Charts on a weekly basis.
"What… what would you say… you do here?"
> What I don't understand is why Apple, the 3 Trillion dollar behemoth, just doesn't call up Jeff Johnson at this point and make him a deal, "We'll pay you $200K/yr and give you the power to police this, from home… have at it."
I don't want that job.
> these scam apps are NOT difficult to discover
That's why Apple doesn't need me specifically.
This exact app store problem has been reported so many times in so many different ways, I think it's reasonable to conclude this is OK with Apple. They benefit from the illusion that these are the real official apps and they get a cut of any fraudulent in app payments generated
We like to think Apple is an ethical corporation and they wouldn't intentionally allow this, but they *do* allow this. And they haven't made any system that even makes it possible to get these taken down without a mass of reporting in the media.
If this cost Apple money, they would've fixed it after the first time. They would've made a system to prevent them from losing money. Instead, they've allowed it to proliferate and it's been profitable for them
@Scott
>What I don't understand is why Apple, the 3 Trillion dollar behemoth, just doesn't call up Jeff Johnson at this point and make him a deal, "We'll pay you $200K/yr and give you the power to police this, from home… have at it."
>Just goes to show how completely out to lunch the entire exec team involved with the App Stores is—all the way up to Cook/Ternus. Because there can't be any other excuse as this point, these scam apps are NOT difficult to discover… all they'd need to be doing is glancing at the Top Charts on a weekly basis.
I think that's what gives it away. They could easily fix this problem and they don't. Because it's not a problem for them, it's a source of revenue. I don't believe for a second they're this out to lunch. They're not. Anything that costs them money or can make them money is highly prioritized.
See also:
"Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers: charging them a premium for ads"
FWIW, I think 10% is a drastic underestimation.
The north star guiding Apple is not, Make The World a Better Place Through the Intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts.
It’s: Services Number Go Up.
I asked the free version of chatgpt to tell me if there were any apps listed in the Mac app store rankings that I should be wary of... and handled it perfectly.
It showed each app with a ranking of legitimacy, and a description that is better than the ones I see on the App Store. It noted that I be careful to "distinguish between malware, deceptive/low-value apps, and merely unnecessary third-party wrappers. Being in the Mac App Store substantially reduces the chance of conventional malware, but it does not mean every app is trustworthy or worthwhile."
The best case scenario is that it isn't a priority for Apple. The worst case is that better policing hurts revenue.
Heh… @Jeff Johnson: "I don't want that job."
If not Jeff Johnson, then Kosta Eleftheriou? We gotta get somebody in there that will fix this! And although Mr. Johnson believes Apple doesn't need him specifically, I wonder if ANYONE who is currently AT APPLE is willing or able to actually make a dent in the problem. Not for lack of capability but for political blowback. That's why I think an outsider—especially one who has spent some time invested in fixing the problem—is almost a requirement at this point… because Max Oakland is correct, and perhaps my sarcasm needed 'labeled', but there's no way Apple has failed so badly at this task besides having done so intentionally. And I don't know that there is a greater indictment of the company today than having thrown in with fraudsters and scammers as the business model for one of their vaunted 'growth sectors'.
@Scott Yes, it seems to be a political issue. We don’t need an outsider like Johnson or Eleftheriou to find the low-hanging fruit. We need whoever in management is blocking this from happening to stop blocking it. It doesn’t make sense to send them into the lion’s den without support, and if there were support they wouldn’t really be needed.
I don’t understand how Apple doesn’t realize this is a big problem by now.
It’s gotten to the point where I no longer tell users to search for anything on the App Store because I am certain they will get scammed. Direct links only.
