How to trick the Mac App Store
At the beginning of January 2011, Mac users booted up after the holiday break to yet another system update. Unlike the 1GB worth of updates that I had to download to get my freshly reinstalled Mac up to date just before new year, this update had one big piece of new functionality, the Mac App Store.
Taking its cue from the iPhone app store, the Mac app store is a one click download and install destination for Mac applications.
My initial impressions of the store were pretty good – there were a whole lot of free apps that I needed to download to complete my usual cornucopia of applications. Apps such as Evernote, Dropbox, and Kindle are an invaluable part of my computing experience and using the App Store to get them was pretty pleasant. Fire up the application, click on the app you want and it starts downloading and installs all by itself. Pretty much idiot proof.
Then this morning I got back to work and I thought I would like to see what Angry Birds was like on the Mac, considering that my iPhone was playing the game pretty much constantly over the holidays.
My Apple account is (as are those of many savvy SA Mac users) tied to the US iTunes store, and you can’t buy apps from the US store using a South African credit card.
Now I understand why this is the case for music and other media which are tied down by arcane licensing agreements, but for applications there is no logical reason that you shouldn’t be able to pay with any credit card on any store.
Why would you want to buy from the US store if you live in South Africa, when we have an app store just for SA? The answer is very simple: Games.
As with the iPhone app store you cannot buy any games or even download free games from the SA store, they simply don’t exist.
The reason for this is pretty straightforward: in order to sell a game in SA you have to get it vetted by the Film and Publications board to make sure that little kiddies aren’t playing Death, Destruction and Sex 3.
The fact that there is not even a category for games on the SA store tells me that instead of spending a little time setting up a system for games publishers to get their games rated in SA, Apple has chosen to take the easy way out and just block the whole category.
Sadly, this is typical of Apple’s attitude toward markets that it considers ‘non-core.’ South Africa is also falling foul of a legislative system that simply was not designed for the realities of digital distribution.
I do however have a solution for the woes of those people that don’t want to buy iTunes vouchers and buy in the US store: Move to Kenya.
I was going to check if Kazakhstan had a games category when I saw that there was a Mac App Store for Kenya.
So I created an Apple ID for the Kenyan store, ticked the box to accept the terms and conditions, used my credit card billing address for the street address (but filled in Nairobi as the city). I dug up a Nairobi post code and phone number, although I doubt that they will check the phone number as long as it conforms to their numbering system – three digit code and seven digit number.
For the credit card details, I entered my SA card details and then clicked ‘Buy’ for the US$4.99 version of Angry Birds.
Lo and behold, a short while later, the pigs were getting it from the birds.
So, that is how you get around the Film and Publications board. This apparently works for iPad apps as well, so go wild.
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