Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About
buzzwordcompliant.net
buzzwordcompliant.net
Their comments aren't binding (or even something I'd reference), and the approval criteria is constantly evolving, but they're pretty good at pointing out concerns from a 30 second description of the app.
This is good to do if you're doing something you think may get you in trouble, but think it won't necessarily do so. They've been very helpful in the past about their criteria for the different GPS APIs etc.
http://developer.apple.com/contact/phone.html
Literally the first result when searching for "apple developer support phone number".
The original commentator posed a solution, "Call them" but no phone number.
The second commentator realized this gap, and asked, "What is the phone number?" One could reasonably expand upon this, it certainty hasn't occurred to me that you could call them and talk to them either. Do you need to be enrolled? Is the number secret? Where is the number. Clearly the first commentator must know this and more, as he is posing it as a solution. At the very least, he must have the number, or know where to get the number.
You, the third commentator, come in with the Google Result. Obvious to some, just Google it. Not obvious to others. If it wasn't obvious that you could call them, it would be less obvious that the number is simply publicly available. Further, search results can sometimes be inconclusive, and while this one was the first result and directly on Apple.com, other queries are not so obvious. Again, the first source clearly had the information, and he was directly asked when he did not provide it.
That is why communities, question and answer sites, forums, Stack Overflow, and everything else exist. Direct knowledge from people who are verified or profess to having the information that you seek. Some people feel better about direct conversations or direct answers from people vs. casting their fishing hook out in to the giant open Internet and hoping they catch their answer. Some people aren't any good at searching. Sometimes just asking someone who knows can be quicker.
You don't need to be good to Google most things.
> Sometimes just asking someone who knows can be quicker.
Google knows the answer to most simple queries like this.
You shouldn't ask a question where the answer is trivially Googled; Google first, then ask when you can't find the answer. The previous poster had the right attitude by saying let me Google that for you, it's such a pervasive problem that sites like http://lmgtfy.com have to exist to help educate lazy people.
Yes, some people prefer to ask a human rather than Google; those people are lazy and need to be educated, not pacified.
"Yes, some people prefer to ask a human rather than Google; those people are lazy and need to be educated, not pacified."
Doesn't it strike you as somewhat borg-like, subsumed by technology that we should deny people to impulse to ask other people things?
I realize that aggregators and comments sections give a sort of false illusion that it's a small number of people in a conversation when the number of actual viewers of a thread (and hence, multiple wasted 'human' cycles spent processing 'noise'), but seriously... we should always defer to the algorithm, the index, the internet rather than asking humans?
Pandering to trivial requests only encourages trivial requests. Hell, in a forum recently I responded to someone saying "you need version -foo- and you can find it here (link)". He said thanks... then three days later asked where he could find it (link was still valid). The next two comments were asking where they could find the exact thing in the link I'd given and described the parameters of. You also see the same thing in countless forums where commentor -foo- comes along, ignores the comments, and demands someone PM them with the solution.
I don't have a problem with repeating stuff that's buried in the comments on page 5 or whatnot, but when it's this level of trivial crap, it is just chaff and shouldn't be encouraged.
I honestly didn't realize it was a hard to find resource either which is why I left it out, but even googling it, I don't see it anywhere.
Also: Be nice to the guys on the other end of it. They've never been less than that to anyone who's been nice to them, nor treated them like idiots. Also, they don't set the policy, they just help devs navigate them. They are also decidedly non-technical, but policy based.
It's not like people are personally asking icey or you dozens of questions a day. The questioner has shown no evidence of laziness. Let us all exercise a little restraint.
On here, no, but in real life, yes, I get asked dozens of questions a day people could easily answer themselves if they just Googled. There's a reason programmers start getting annoyed with people being lazy; they're making you do their thinking for them and you get sick of it.
> I think most people are like that. Why be snarky about it?
Because one gets tired of doing other people's thinking for them when they're capable of doing it themselves.
> and I still occasionally ask a question without thinking to google it.
That's the problem, that happens to me constantly by people who just don't think; it's rude; your process should start with Google before bugging someone else who's just going to Google anyway.
Nobody was even asking you specifically. Is it really easier to call people names than to just move on to read other stuff?
..bugging someone else who's just going to Google anyway
No, people are often asking if someone knows the answer off the top of their head.
Anyways, this thread has outlived its usefulness. Over and out.
I didn't call anyone names, please don't put words in my mouth. I described their behavior as being lazy, that is not name calling.
> Anyways, this thread has outlived its usefulness. Over and out.
Ditto.
For instance, if you were standing next to someone, and you asked them a question, it would not be the social norm to say "google it" even if you knew the answer.
Either that, or the internet just gives the idiots that would say "google it" if you spoke to them in person and they knew the answer, a platform for themselves, when in real life they'd have no friends/get ignored/get punched in the face.
Or gently remind them to google it. I wouldn't bother myself, but that's reasonable too.
Saying "it's literally the first result" like icey did seems more than a gentle reminder. It's the start of the slippery slope. Distracting - I don't even remember what we were talking about anymore.
Generalizing from the action to the actor like gnaritas did, criticizing somebody as rude, lazy and refusing to think for themselves because they thoughtlessly introduced some chaff -- now we're deep in over-reaction territory, breaking eggs with sledgehammers, generating more chaff than the original poster.
I'm not in any way defending the question itself. The best response to a minor infraction (including levity perhaps) is to just ignore it.
So we're discouraging asking questions now? That's a troubling stance.
Google's general improvements at googling are making things easier to google. But the world keeps inventing better idiots, and it is a cat and mouse game. Which is not to say that anyone in this thread is an idiot; far from it. But we must recognize that some people are inherently bad at search. Are they intimidated? Are they inputting the wrong queries? Are they asking the right things but unable to find what they're seeking in their results? There are quite a lot of things that could go wrong with the search itself, before even addressing the individual and how they seek and learn.
Some people learn by reading. Some people learn by listening. Some people learn by doing. This is not a weakness or a laziness issue, this is a human behavior issue. You're not pacifying people by giving them the information they're seeking. We used to call that answering, because they asked a question. If, as posed in this scenario, the first poser provided incomplete information, and the second poster posted a question asking for clarification or more details, I really fail to see how this is laziness that needs to be pacified. That is a very negative view of someone who just wanted more details.
The person was seeking education, they asked a question. Negativity and arrogance on how it was so obvious and they should have just searched for it are not helping educate anyone. They have the opposite effect: next time the person may not even bother asking at all, now feeling alienated and perhaps it's best to not try to learn at all. That doesn't help anyone. Not the person, the community, you, or me. We are all left worse for it.
It seems pretty obvious that some questions are better not posted on a discussion site, because they bring down the value of the conversation.
It is not negative to tell them to Google for themselves, it's teaching a man to fish. The answer to all simple questions is Google it yourself, that's a more valuable education than any other response.
>The correct number is 1 (408) 996-1010, ask for developer relations, 8am-5pm pacific time.
>It is not on that page.
In this case, pointing out I left out the number was the correct move.
However, it is kind of frustrating when people don't attempt to put forth the most basic effort in finding information like this.
I'm not an Apple developer at all, and it took more time to copy and paste the url into a comment box than it did to find the phone number.
It is not on that page.
Be nice to them.
"You shouldn't have to make an anonymous reviewer think about puppies to get your app passed." You don't. I guess it could help if your app was in a gray area but I don't see it helping that much.
"I'd just like an app market where Apps are guaranteed to not be privacy violators, trojans, or capable of damaging my hardware." While we're going all wishlist let's go scammer free and get an astroturf resistant rating system with much higher discoverability.
As for thinking about puppies, my point is that the 'human factor' in Apple's review process seems to count for too much. It should be cut and dry: it is legal, does what it claims and does nothing behind your back, and has no trojans.
I really don't know what it takes to get rejected on top of the already existing ground rules they spell out on their site. Apple really hasn't given me any trouble at all (except emailing after accepting to change a little artwork to clean up an icon next pass).