New Rejection Reason From Apple May Have Major Implications | Hacker News Reader

New Rejection Reason From Apple May Have Major Implications

readitlaterlist.com

147 pointsolefoo50 comments

The email is confusingly worded, but I think it's simply saying that

1. you can't require account registration if the app does not provide account-specific functionality, and

2. if your app has both account-specific and non-account-specific functionality, registration can only be required to access the former.

I'm going to agree with houseabsolute and chalk this up to a mistake. That is, the app reviewer mistakenly assumed the app did not have account-specific functionality, or exclusively account-specific functionality. There are far too many (major) apps that require an account to do anything for his interpretation to make sense.

I wouldn't put this sort of craziness past Apple, but reviewer error just seems far more likely.

I think the wording is poor here but this basically appears to boil down to 'you cannot ask for a bunch of personal information from users for no valid reason'. Which seems entirely reasonable and a good use of Apple's power to stop the harvesting of personal information. But lets not let that get in the way of a good outrage session.

I think all this will do, is just get the people to add one tiny functionality that meets this requirement.

> But lets not let that get in the way of a good outrage session.

I know it's an old argument and many people don't like to be reminded of it, but for some people, each an every one of these 'total platform rejections' represents an outrage.

Wow people are sensitive. Of course it's perfectly fine for the Apple apologists to rehash their justifications on each and every instance of this. But for somebody to reaffirm the basic problem with the app store model is deserving of censure. What a place of intelligent debate this is.

Why do people get all defensive when it's Apple making a mistake? Even if you what you wrote is accurate, Apple is at fault here because Read It Later does require an account to sync the lists, and only needs a username/password to create an account. That's barely any personal information.

It's extremely defensive fanboys like you that muddy the debate. 'OMG people are raging on poor poor Apple, must defend and downvote!'

Uhh, the article states it's only a username and password required. That's not really personal information, and it's for a valid reason. I say, outrage session approved. Especially for an app already in the store, whose explicit purpose is account specific!

The Facebook and Twitter apps are actually web services that require a username/password and their apps are merely extensions of their website. Does his app have a standalone service that would justify a username/password? Or would it be equivalent to forcing me to register to play a game like Plant vs Zombies, which has no functionality that would justify password protecting it.

TFA: "Read It Later is a simple account-based service. Read It Later does not collect ‘personal’ information, you just need a username and password to create an account. The account allows you to sync your reading list between your iPhone, iPad, computers, and browsers."

I've rejected Apple's ability to tell me what programming language I'm allowed to use (whether I'm kept back in the 80's in terms of language sophistication, for example) and I've rejected their ability to make me wait weeks only to hear an update has been rejected for some dumb random reason which they shouldn't care about at all. I've rejected a marketplace full of fart apps that somehow do meet with their approval, and I've rejected a marketplace full of dumb content which should never have been an app in the first place.

</rant>

Too bad you did not reject an urge to rant about the things you neither care about nor use them.

The poster of the parent comment is a published iPhone developer with substantial experience in delivering games and custom apps.

http://synisma.com/iphone.html

Thanks for pointing that out. Now I am confused…

yes, thank you!

and I've sold non-iPhone software outside the App Store so I know what the alternatives are like. It is definitely a bigger challenge getting eyeballs but is better in most every other way.

But he did use and care about them. It is a rant from experience

So has everyone else. They rejected AT&T, too, and Apple's market share went from "everyone" to "just the true believers".

Can you imagine the backlash if Apple raised the bar on what would be an acceptable app? Class action lawsuits and senators would get involved. They knew there was no way to get the best apps without allowing anyone (with restrictions) to submit an app.

As an iPhone developer, I agree with the seemingly too long eight to ten day approval queue. However, the App Store's closed marketplace is currently the only viable solution for independent developers to have the potential for making money. Unless Android decides to reign in part of its anarchist marketplace, the Apple App Store will be the marketshare leader. iTunes is a fuzzy safe place for people to buy stuff - before iTunes it was very difficult for people who wanted to buy music without time-bomb DRM involved. People like the feeling of security - locks on doors are a good thing.

Apple may be banning other languages (with exceptions like Lua) because it is a protectionist policy that benefits them and (to a lesser degree) their developers. Think of Objective C/Cocoa as a tariff that developers must pay to enter the closed marketplace. App makers like Titanium and Phonegap devalue the value of the marketplace because they allow anyone to participate and simultaneously release apps to multiple platforms.

In the long run, Google and Android will get the majority of market share. That is their strategy. It's like Windows v. Mac redux. Commodity against premium.

The reality is that before Apple - you had to court a mobile network operator to get an app on a mobile device. And they took 50%.

If Google cared about its Android developers, they would buy an app maker like Titanium and make it the Visual Basic of the mobile web.

How can you reject C and fart apps in the same rant? One is a serious technological breakthrough, the other is a mockery of technology.

The OpenBSD guys have a point when they are critical of much of the new-fangled technology. When a significant percentage of power consumption and band-width are used for fart apps and Farmville, you have to wonder if that is a wise use of the technology.

Edit: Clarified C's place in technology.

I think the policy is stupid, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Objective-C. It may be a product of the 80s but it remains very relevant, especially in its 2.0 form.

It's the ultimate quality control.... If you aren't willing to learn objective-C then you were likely not working on a worthwhile app.

Same thing if you already know objective c but are unwilling to develop in it.

Of course this is a side benefit, the realvreason was to keep flash crap off of the platform, so that apple wouldn't be hostage to adobe again.

Can we please all wait for Apple to clarify before getting too excited at another reason to hate the app store?

As much as a sensationalist 'Apple are evil' might help promote your product only having one letter to go on and not waiting for a response for clarification is really lame journalism.

That sort of rational, reasoned approach has no place in a discussion like this. Clearly what this situation calls for is a knee jerk reaction based on limited information and pre-existing prejudices and I'm shocked that you could ever think otherwise.

Right. Let's not preemptively collect data points. Lets wait for Apple to clarify their mysterious positions just because we asked them to. I'm sure that will happen right away.

I don't see the OP as a "knee jerk reaction" but rather a warning to everyone else saying "hey, things might be changing again, stay alert".

And we should definitely take comments meant in jest as seriously as possible.

Wouldn't be better to have registration optional for syncing? You could still use Read It Later without registering but only on the current platform without syncing.

Ps: If you follow this thread of logic then Apple is right, a person doesn't need to register to use the basic features of the application.

Seems to probably be a benign mistake that will be rectified or clarified in the future.

I wish I had your confidence. :(

Let's face it: Apple will and can reject whatever they want for whatever reasons and you can do nothing about (except by abandoning the appstore).

I personally couldn't invest weeks of time in an app where i can't be sure whether it may be rejected for some stupid reason.

I have invested months confident that my app wouldn't be rejected for a stupid reason, and i was right.

Still not aware of any apps rejected for stupid reasons. However there ares a lot of stupid reasons spread as misinformation to make people think apple is urneqsosnable in their review process.

Apple is pretty reasonable, even in this situation here.

In my experience, this is similar to the notice I got when they wanted the submission to include information for login without registration. A resubmit with a dumby account satisfied Apple in my case.

Did you forget to give Apple a demo account for the reviewer to use?

I am a newbie in this space. Is it better to build webapps for Twitter, facebook and Gmail like applications that rely heavily on the data to be downloaded? Is this the best route for web developers to take? I have seen sencha mobile and it looks great for cross device compatibility as well iphone/ipad/android.

Hi, being new I think it might be a good idea to tell you why you're being downvoted. You're posting a comment that is a good question, but has nothing to do with this article. There are other places more suited for such questions (you can post it here as an "Ask HN" thread, but there are places that talk specifically about these kinds of issues which are even better).

the situation got "fixed" at the second try http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-approved...

I haven't read all of the comments on this yet, but I can would venture to guess that Apple is planning on including their Safari 5 "Reader" functionality in iOS in the near future. Maybe this has something to do with it?

This is obviously a mistake on Apple's part.

this is my favorite ff addon,

and apple may be evil, but if they products are the best, the market will buy them, no matter what

so every time an app gets refused we have to whine and blog about it? bloggers are becoming obnoxiously louder every day.

Apple Store, the latest killer app !

This developer is an idiot.

It's very simple. You can't make people register for no reason just to use an app. (e.g. just to harvest their information.)

Twitter, facebook, evernote, all have account features so they were approved. Apple was crystal clear explaining this.

The poster's muddled logic and inflamatory reaction shows me why Instapaper by Marco is a vastly superior product.

My guess is the author is using a fake controversy to drum up attention for his product. Astroturfing, methinks.

I'm not sure this is Astroturfing; Astroturfing is making something carefully planned look spontaneous and bottom-up. We need a new term for this. I suggest misinterpretunity.

As far as I can tell, RiL has account features. I don't know the guy but I have exchanged emails with him regarding pinboard.in integration and he didn't seem like an idiot nor is it really all that likely that he's posting this just to promote his app.

'Astroturfing' seems an odd choice of words, too, for someone who seems to have just created an account to call someone else an idiot.

A P.S.-ish edit - I know he recently wrote an opensource iOS library to simplify integration with various sharing services and seems to have added it to the latest version of his iPhone app. Pure speculation but I wonder if the reviewers saw that the app can potentially ask you for authentication information for a bunch of different services and some 'password harvester' alarm went off.

Is the ad hominem necessary? The app offers account-based features, namely cross-platform syncing.

Applying "never ascribe to malace what can be more simply ascribed to incompetence", I expect this is just a bad, baseless rejection. Apple is clearly not going to stop in-app login and registration, so this post is mainly FUD.

I can see how App Store rejection can drive a developer to these thoughts though.

How would you expect a service like this to exist without tieing an account to the items which you marked to read later?

So it depends on what you view as the primary functionality of this app.

If the primary functionality is the syncing between multiple devices, then this rejection is invalid and I understand the developer's dismay since an account would absolutely be necessary.

If the primary functionality is "save this article to read later", then I can understand the reviewer's rejection. In theory, you could implement this software locally for single device, which wouldn't require any registration. And then you would only need an account if you wished to enable the "secondary" syncing functionality. I think this was the reviewer's frame of mind.

So I think this is simply a case of miscommunication and misunderstanding that will be corrected shortly.

I use Read It Later quite often. The account specific functionality is synchronization for saved URL's between Read It Later on various platforms: iPhone, Firefox, etc.

>>This developer is an idiot.
>>It's very simple. You can't make people register for no reason just to use an app. (e.g. just to harvest their information.)

>>My guess is the author is using a fake controversy to drum up attention for his product. Astroturfing, methinks.

I think you're being unduly harsh on this developer.

"Read it later" is an instapaper-like app and it makes perfect sense for the app to need an account.

My understanding is that read-it-later collects no personal information other than their read-it-later username and password.

The app has been around for more than a year. The free version of read-it-later is ranked 22nd in productivity. I think that the developer is genuinely concerned about the rejection and don't see this as astroturfing.

Why do you suspect the developer of harvesting user information and astroturfing ?

[edit: The parent post was at 10 points around 40 minutes ago. Now it is at -4. That is really interesting :) ]

It was at 6 when it was 3 minutes old, IIRC. (Or it might have been 3 at 6 minutes. What I do know is that I was struck by how oddly popular it was for a flamebaity comment from a new account.)

And now it is at -12, as you can see by looking at the total karma of -13 for this one-comment throwaway account. (Ha, I found an information disclosure vulnerability in the HN codebase ;-))

I feel that the key is "they require customers to register with personal information without providing account-based features". Instapaper, for example, requires a login, but not requires personal informations, only a login (that could be anything). I could be wrong, of course. I use Instapaper and not this app.

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