Apple has blocked a long-time developer from his Apple ID after he failed to redeem what support suggested was a dodgy $500 gift card, leaving him unable to work, cut off from personal files, and barred from what he calls his "core digital identity."
This isn't just any developer, either: The unlucky Apple aficionado in this case is Dr. Paris Buttfield-Addison, a Tasmania-based computer scientist who co-founded an award-winning game development company and has written multiple books on developing for Objective-C, the Swift programming language, and iOS.
"I have effectively been an evangelist for this company's technology for my entire professional life," Buttfield-Addison said in a blog post detailing his struggle with Apple's account system.
According to Buttfield-Addison, his account was flagged as "closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions" recently. The only thing he can link the issue to is his recent purchase and attempt to redeem a $500 Apple gift card to use to pay for his 6TB iCloud+ storage plan, which he said failed when he attempted to activate it.
Buttfield-Addison contacted the retailer, an unnamed "major brick-and-mortar retailer," which reissued the code after suggesting it may have been compromised. Shortly after that, he was locked out of his account.
The Apple developer said that he's been signed out of iMessage, can't access his iCloud account, is unable to access terabytes' worth of family photos stored on Apple servers, and has basically been blackballed from the Apple ecosystem.
"My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly," Buttfield-Addison said. "I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media."
He naturally reached out to Apple to see what happened, according to the blog post, but received little in the way of help, with support staff reportedly refusing to tell him why his account was banned and saying that escalating the matter "won't lead to a different outcome."
An Apple senior advisor reportedly told Buttfield-Addison to just create a new account – a piece of advice he said was "technically disastrous" for a number of reasons, including the possibility it would end his career as an Apple developer.
"Attempting to 'dodge' a ban by creating a new ID could lead to my Developer Program membership being permanently blacklisted, amongst other things," Buttfield-Addison said.
Buttfield-Addison wrote in an update to his blog post over the weekend that he had been in touch with a member of Apple's Executive Relations team, who said they were looking into the matter and would call him back on Monday, December 15, but he noted that things were "not looking good" after writing the Sunday update.
As of this writing, he still hasn't heard back. "No luck yet, and they don't seem positive," Buttfield-Addison told The Register.
Even if Apple manages to resolve the issue, Buttfield-Addison isn't sure he's going to take another chance on iBiz after this kerfuffle.
"I will leave as fast as I can even if this is fixed," he told us. "I do mean that literally."
He told us he's looking at switching to Linux for his laptops and an Android device for his future smartphone. It'll be hard, Buttfield-Addison noted, but he doesn't feel Apple has left him with much recourse.
"Yes, it'll be a shitshow, but how can I trust such an account again even if they fix it?" he told us.
Buttfield-Addison suspects he's become yet another victim of the automation of basic support functions that used to be the domain of human employees, though he's not sure that's the case. We've seen a similar mess recently on YouTube, where the platform took down several Windows 11 workaround videos under its harmful-acts rule, only to reinstate them after public backlash and creator complaints raised questions about automated moderation.
The YouTubers we covered and Buttfield-Addison are lucky enough to have a high profile that merits media attention, but if the average Apple customer has their account irrevocably suspended after purchasing a gift card that someone already registered through a scam, it's much harder to draw attention to the matter.
This incident also raises the specter of questionable digital content ownership. We've already seen companies revoke ownership of media users thought they had purchased. But if Apple can wholesale ban you from accessing your personal files and family photos with no reliable channel to resolve a potential misunderstanding, you don't appear to own anything that isn't physical and held in your direct possession.
We contacted Apple about Buttfield-Addison's situation, and its broader policy on account suspensions and appeals, but haven't heard back. ®
Source: The register