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Comment by DonHopkins | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I get what the issue with the Apple store is. I read the article, and I'm still confused. What did you want to do, and why did they not yet you do it? Why does the name of the app need to have any relation to what it does? There are plenty of apps named things like "Blorg" that do all kinds of things that there's not even a word for. The name doesn't need to be descriptive, it's just a brand. "Pokemon Go" doesn't have any meaning outside of the totally fictitious Pokemon universe. Just make something up like that, like "Glork Zonker Pro".

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I wanted to release a completely separate app, appropriately named for victims of domestic abuse using a simple 2048 game with hidden dead man switch functionality. For 3 months going back and forth with Apple they told me the app was spam because it mimiced partial functionality of the existing app on the app store that is appropriately named for a completely different target audience (ones where dead man switch is completely relevant).

Apple would only approve the app if I integrated it into the existing app but not with the 2048 game because the name wouldn't match the functionality and a dead man switch app called 2048 doesn't make sense for the majority of users. You seem to be missing the fact that this app already exists with a current set of users already. Calling it Glorp Zonker Pro is not exactly relevant to them.

I still don't understand why the name matters, since you say the abuse shelter or support group would be the ones who recommend installing the app to the victim, and presumably they didn't find out about it by searching the app store for fun sounding games.

That's correct, they found me by searching for dead man switches.

I think you're going to have to market this through other channels, pushing the message out to people who would want to use and distribute it, instead of assuming that many people will think that there's a category of mobile software called "dead man's switch" and go searching for it. It's not obvious how "dead man's switch" had any connection with domestic abuse. It sounds more like a really ineffective health app.

This is Product B. Product A is deadman's switch. It is appropriately named for the target audience of Product A. Apple won't allow Product B on grounds that it's spamming variants of Product A. So he's forced to create Product B as an offshoot of Product A unless he's going to get rid of Product A to have the desired Product B

tl;dr Apple is forcing this unfortuate circumstance

As you may know, there is an app called Bright Sky which offers help to victims of abuse but that can be disguised as a weather app. From the reviews I’m not sure they have fully solved the ‘duplicitous’ aspect (it is available under Education). However something of this nature is very important so I wish all the devs. luck. As one further point, there must be people trapped in an abusive relationship who aren’t aware; i.e. that they have been manipulated into believing it is their fault and that nothing bad is being done to them. (I know there are such people from experience). I don’t feel I have said anything particularly useful but I thought it might set someone thinking.

Wasn't aware, good to know there's more options, ideally there'd be a lot of different options to keep this functionality in some obscurity

What you described is called gaslighting

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