At Apple they have taken seriously the demands of the European Commission and the FTC about payments for applications and the risk they run the most clueless users. For this reason they have modified the download buttons of these tools and games in order to not mislead anyone about the final cost that an application or content may have.Thus, the Free button disappears to welcome Get, a change that Many will not appreciate it but it has its important connotations and a whole history of problems behind it.
Thus, both through the platform iTunes from where you can access all content (films, records and books) as well as apps and games, like at App Store, the exclusive Apple store for your devices,the label of free applications has changed And it doesn't matter if the application is completely free or, if, on the contrary, it is free but has integrated purchases This sign is already present for all of themSomething that will help users clearly differentiate them from paid apps and games, whose Get button is labeled with the immediate price to pay to download it
But, then, what has really changed? There is little point in changing one label for another if the truly free tools are still not more noticeably differentiated from those that have in-app purchases However, with the wordGet instead of Free one of the requirements of is achieved Apple (and also to Google) to prevent users from thinking that the content is completely free when there may be a purchase process inside In this way it is hoped that the user at least does not arrive deceived or confusedfor a label that may well not be entirely true
And there are many cases and lawsuits against Apple, Google and developers for having billed thousands of dollars and euros for involuntary or unconscious purchasesCases like that of the child who ends up spending 37,000 euros on a strategy game without realizing that purchasing processes were not necessarily part of the title. Alarms that reached bodies such as the European Commission and the US FTC and that have ended up becoming certain demandsfor these companies that distribute applications and games.
Next to the removal of the Free banner, something that Google is still pending, there have also been other notable changes in both App Store and Google Play Issues such as showing the physical address of the developers in order to find them and raise any type of complaint or claim , or other options such as being able to always protect these purchases by applying a password that must be known and entered each time a transaction is accessed .
Measures that would prevent, as far as possible, purchases from being made by children who access the device without the consent of their parents or tutors, or that they are the ones who, unconsciously, end up acquiring additional content. And, at least in App Store there are no more applications “Free”.
