App update rejected for mentioning iPhone XR in release notes | Hacker News Reader

App update rejected for mentioning iPhone XR in release notes

eod.com

156 pointsspatten66 comments

It's considerably rare for me to do this, but I'll advocate for the devil in the white suit.

Imagine you added support for a device that's not out yet, that you probably don't even physically possess (unless you're a heavy developer, and even that's probably a pre-release model), but that you're assuming will readily accept your updated app. Except when finally the device is released, it turns out the support you added for the new device was imperfectly applied, frustrating the experience of users everywhere who are used to this app working just fine on other devices but not this one.

Now imagine this happening with multiple apps, perhaps because the developer documentation for the device was an inferior match for reality, perhaps because the documentation was consistently mis-interpreted, perhaps because the emulation in development was slightly inaccurate. Whatever the cause, a vast lot of supposedly compatible apps are very much not.

Which product's image is harmed most by this outcome?

In this hypothetical scenario how could it possibly be a worse outcome compared to not attempting to support compatibility at all?

Devs can still try to support the XR, Apple is just saying don't claim to support it. That approach is often described as "under promise and over deliver" (and generally works better than the reverse)

That’d make sense if it was what Apple says.

They allow anyone to say that their app is XS-compatible even if they never owned an iPhone.

Their worry is not actual compatibility.

True, Apple's stated reasons are even simpler and more sensible: you can't advertise compatibility to a pre-GM application or device. That's part of the rules, and explicitly stated in the original rejection message.

GM stands for Gold Master I believe. Apple's concern therefore isn't that the device isn't out yet, it's that it's not finalized, and they don't want an app update to say that it supports something which isn't finalized yet because it could change tomorrow (even if that's unlikely).

This entire thing is based on the author missing and still never noticing after writing this entire rant up the key term in the initial rejection:

  > Apps with compatibility references to a pre-GM version

Apple didn't say you can't mention the iPhone XR, they said you can't claim compatibility with it yet... the author went through some great lengths to play up the absurdity of Apple wanting to keep the model under wraps and it's pretty clear that was never what they were asking

Combined with childish behavior and trying to follow the letter but not the spirit of the rules. A great idea if you’re being judged by a computer, a bad idea if you’re requesting a person to re-review your app.

Why not just state ‘compatibility updates’ and nothing else?

Because had OP done that, then wouldn’t have been able to write up this childish screed I just wasted time reading as well as everyone else and thus make a total arse of themself, and waste app reviewers time because OP can’t be an adult.

A fun read and on the face of it, Apple's stance does seem obstinate/bizarre... but on the other hand, with my testing hat on: how can you claim to support an unreleased phone? There's not even a cloud testing service yet...

Xcode ships with a simulator for these phones.

Simulator being the key point here. It is not emulating the actual phone itself.

It merely translates the iOS calls into OSX ones. It is not accurate in all cases and can be wildly off when it comes to performance.

Ok, but for many apps the only thing that really changes is the new screen size. For example, I will be pushing out updates to my app without testing on the new devices themselves, since it really does not rely on any new features.

In a perfect world all app devs would have 10 iPhones To be able to test across all different hardware. Of course, that would be ridiculous.

It's even worse: one of each device for every OS version supported, which Apple themselves make exceptionally difficult as it's nearly impossible to downgrade to older OS versions.

That’s actually pretty common. The cost of testing hardware is much much lower than the cost of the developer making the app.

> It merely translates the iOS calls into OSX ones

That is not an accurate description of what the simulator does. It is a separate userspace running on the same kernel, in this case the iOS userspace running side-by-side but isolated from the macOS userspace.

The simulator uses entirely iOS binaries, built for x86/x86-64. This includes UIKit, Foundation, libc, libdispatch, etc. It does not use the macOS ABI, nor the macOS libc/Objective-C/Swift runtimes. Each individual simulated device is its own isolated mach bootstrap, with its own separate launchd, daemons, and XPC services.

With the exception of a few libraries like the syscall interface and libpthread, which are tightly bound to the kernel.

And still, the simulator is not the same as running on-device. Much of the iOS security model is non-existent in the simulator. If you’ve ever written an AppEx using a shared container, you know that. (Or you’re running to verify your code works on-device right now)

The simulator has to render the screen via the macOS display device, and I can tell you my trusty Radeon 5870 is only up for rendering about 5 frames per second in the simulator.

I’m pretty sure any Metal apps will be wildly different in the simulator.

I don’t even consider myself an expert iOS Programmer at this point, and I can come up with three examples off the top of my head. I’m sure there are plenty more. And there’s a reason every single iOS library or widget on GitHub requires all bug reports to be made only after testing on-device.

The same has happened to a few other developers. Luc Vandal tweeted that his Mac app was rejected for mentioning compatibility with macOS Mojave:

https://twitter.com/lucvandal/status/1042023268352512001/pho...

And Hendrik Holtmann said his app was rejected for mentioning iOS 12 in the release notes - after iOS 12 had been publicly released:

https://twitter.com/holtmann/status/1042062878965153792

Hmm I've received a couple MAS updates already claiming Mojave compatibility in their release notes. In fact I just updated Magnet, which does so.

Yep, Luc's own app was previously approved with Mojave mentioned in the release notes, then rejected later by Apple for mentioning it. It seems to be the luck of the draw, depending on which reviewer you get and how strictly they want to apply the rules that day:

https://twitter.com/lucvandal/status/1042030087267409925

You can also probably assume that they sometimes miss things. Unfortunately. Rather than just strict application of the rules.

"Fly the pirate flag, toss a hammer at Big Brother, think different — just don’t violate Section 3.2 of the Program License Agreement, and communicate to your users words that are on a billboard you drove past on your way to work. Be a rebel, but somewhere else."

Savage!! :D

I just read some of his other posts - entertaining writing style.

Apple seemed to be very reasonable here—they reached out to the developer sensing their frustration with advice on getting their app approved. Seems to me that apple wants to help this to get approved by investing the effort of calling the developer. Remember all the complaints about how apple doesn’t communicate with developers? Seems like they’re trying to do better and I never saw any angry app updates. I mean maybe the policy is silly but there’s better ways to protest than passive aggressive release notes that would confuse the users. I mean there’s a lot of disagreeable things Apple does but is this really the hill you chose to die on?

Part of it could be legal. I don’t want to say this is likely in any way, but the bottom of every XR page says this:

> iPhone XR has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. iPhone XR is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.

It could be that they aren’t wanting to imply that they’ve given out review units or other demo units in violation of not having approval.

I’m not saying it’s super likely, but it’s also not impossible.

This is the only reasonable explanation. If they fail to release it for any reason, they don’t want apps to mention a phone that never existed (especially if, say, they don’t have the rights to the name)

This is far from the only reasonable explanation. The reasonable explanation is that Apple doesn’t want devs claiming compatibility with a device that they can’t have possibly tested on yet.

An extremely fun read, but the obvious "solution" to this silliness is to simply write "added support for new display sizes such as the iPhone XS." and call it a day.

But I appreciated a look into what happens when you start pushing back...

> Clearly, I’m being an obstinate jerk

Yes. That is basically the gist of it.

Messing with low level, customer care team who are just trying to enforce the policies really is pretty childish.

I'd suggest that the policies are pretty childish, and anyone who has worked with the App Store before knows full well how completely arbitrary and insane it is--this should come as no surprise.

The Author of the article said it beautifully - I know that millions of people are battling every day for their dignity and their families and their lives. But, goddammit, this is a bridge too stupid, and I can’t cross it.

> But, goddammit, this is a bridge too stupid, and I can’t cross it.

And I am sure the customer care person at Apple found this so hilarious.

This is nothing more than a refined version of the idiots on YouTube squirting water guns at McDonalds cashiers. Because you know they deserve it for daring to work at McDonalds at the first place.

Except McDonalds cashiers don't get six figure salaries to decide the entire fate of your livelihood every time you order a burger.

App reviewers don't earn six figure salaries.

From accounts it is a low-level, call centre type role. Actually not far off a McDonalds cashier.

This comment seems to imply that you have a salary threshold where you deem it acceptable to make people's lives a misery just for doing their job... So what is it? $50,000? $75,000?

From this fine article:

> Fly the pirate flag, toss a hammer at Big Brother, think different — just don’t violate Section 3.2 of the Program License Agreement, and communicate to your users words that are on a billboard you drove past on your way to work. Be a rebel, but somewhere else.

But the policies are clearly asinine. If those low level customer care employees aren't empowered to bubble up legitimate customer complaints then there's at least _two_ things here Apple needs to address.

Sure, he should leave the customer care team alone and speak with the higher ups!

How does one do that, exactly?

I think his particular battle with Apple is not the most worth, and it's not unreasonable of them to prevent you from claiming compatibility with unreleased phones, but please let's not forget we're talking about a company that does not even have a public bug tracker, and will close your tickets as duplicates without you being able to read or be notified about the other supposed ticket your is a duplicate of.

It's a totally opaque company that gives developers no resort to fix their issues. You can only talk with the lowest level support and you can only take it out on them (which you should do politely, of course)

And people wonder why many changelogs are just "Bug fixes and other improvements".

I have noticed Apple has gotten meaner in the last 2 months in particular, and this is from someone there since the beginning.

The author tried real hard to paint this as some weird Kafkaesque attempt to keep the phone under-wraps, when really all it is is not being able to say your software is compatible with a device that isn't even out yet, and which you've done no testing on. The author comes out of this seeming slightly deranged.

> The author comes out of this seeming slightly deranged.

That you think so makes me think you seem "slight" deranged by Apples guideline process. That's some next level stupidity where that corporate line of "hey, we have emulators for it, which are intended for you to test, but you cannot mention this in an update" makes actually sense to someone.

I saw the humour in not being able to mention a publicly advertised and software compatible device. I'm honestly not sure how you think app development for new devices on _an existing platform_ works.

This is standard. For example, you cannot mention support for macOS Mojave, or until last week, iOS 12.

So what is expected then? Update your app to support it but not mention the change in the patch notes?

I'm not sure, since I have no idea of the rationale behind the rule. Might be because Apple wants apps to seem like they just "always work", rather than requiring them to be fixed for each release? In any case, I've heard people get around this rule with clever wording, as long as they don't explicitly mention the new hardware/software. For example, "dark mode support", "full screen display", etc.

just mention that it supports the “latest macOS/iOS/hardware” and leave it at that.

lloeki elsewhere in this thread mentioned that Apple is approving some apps that mention Mojave in their release notes. Whatever the rule is, Apple isn't applying it to everyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055701

Magnet listed as "Optimized for macOS 10.14 Mojave": https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766

It's not right of course but their review process has always been famously inconsistent. It's not an easy job.

ITT: Apple apologists

Eh, it is just the way Apple does things, and people are explaining. You can say they are wrong if you want to.

I love a good story where the little guy stick it to the big guy. The double irony of this is of course that Apple used to be that little guy. In an alternate reality, Steve would have gotten wind of this and done something about it.

I mean of course, we all know Steve was a saint and savior.

Yes. He really stuck it to the big guy.

And by big guy it wasn't the CEO or some VP at Apple. It was a low level app-reviewer who from reports earns something like $20/hour.

$20/hour is considered low salary now?

Depends how much you pay for rent.

Which Steve?

My theory is that Jobs' main task at Apple was to create theater to distract the press and business folk, so that Woz and the rest of Apple's technical staff could get some decent work done while nobody was looking.

Brennan.

Except the rules under Steve's reign were significantly more stringent in many ways than they are now.

Agreed. There is no way MacOS would ship like it does today if he was still around.

The only technicality protecting Apple from massive anti trust regulations with regards to the store is that the iPhone actually isn't a monopoly in cell phone unit shipments.

However, many economists have noted that app revenues (not advertising) is highly skewed towards Apple's platform. When will a $100B app market stop being treated as a feature of physical phone unit shipments, worthy of its own independent regulation?

The thing that annoys the most about this is that he seems to hate Apple SO MUCH and yet he continues to be an Apple developer

If I believed that Apple were so arbitrary, strict, and controlling with their devices and App Store, I don’t think I would be deliberately trolling them with my app changelogs.

You're allowed to criticize things and continue to use them (in fact, I would argue that you very much should criticize things when they could be improved, regardless of whether you use them or not).

Especially in this case as I imagine a large part of his income is tied to releasing apps for ios devices, so he doesn't really have an option to just stop developing for apple.

My point is that the writing style made it seem as if he hates them SO MUCH.

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