Got a rejection for mentioning Apple pre-release software, but I am not
twitter.com
twitter.com
> Long story short: Two features (one from iOS 12, one from iOS 16), and one name: Continuity Camera.
https://twitter.com/eternalstorms/status/1560304401922854920...
https://twitter.com/eternalstorms/status/1560311974034120704
His app uses the iOS 12 feature
They can say it’s in the description but not what specifically? Wtf kind of crappy support tool do they use that they can’t customize canned replies?
FWIW, I'm reading the App Store guidelines now and can't find anything to support this. I must be missing it. What section are you thinking of?
For app developer, getting rejected is a huge deal.
For the reviewer, it is just a normal Friday. Trust me they don't care that much.
I was rejected for asking access to the camera. The App applied filters to images taken. I stated as much in XCode, something along: this app needs access to the camera in order to apply its effects. Rejected for not being clear enough. I reworded, basically adding more cruft: accepted.
I doubt the second version was clearer, in fact, it probably wasn’t. It feels much more like a test to see how much does this account want/need to publish and are willing to cooperate, than actually following rules that make any sense.
More likely the latter, because the crApp Store spammers/scammers seem to have plenty of persistence and somehow manage to make it through review.
The trick is to plan well. Assume delays and the need for re-reviews and don't tie anything to when you think it might be approved.
This also, you know, sucks majorly when planning anything. If Apple had to deal with this kind of review when releasing iPhone they’d put a billion dollars into lobbying it away.
There are numerous government and cellular company approvals they need in order to launch a phone.
And it's hilarious that you think complying with government regulations is a clear and functional process.
No, the trick is to run to the press and raise a big fuss, bypassing app review to get to Apple execs who want to quickly shut down bad PR.
Which is usually inverse if there is a lot of friction with quality developers, because it distracts a lot from what they actually want to deliver.
After 5 years in the App Store, and having my app featured in the Accessibility section, we were flagged for a characteristic that had remained unchanged since launch. In almost every case, our rejections were not related to newly-added features.
What were the exception(s)?
That in-person meeting was more than any rejected developer got.
I am always unfailingly polite and professional, even though I may want to strangle them.
I dunno. I consider this "the cost of doing business." Not thrilled with it, but it's better than friends of mine have had to deal with, when a couple of thugs walk into their new restaurant, and say "Where ya want the video games set up?"
That's just Apple being Apple. It's also one of the reasons I don't use their products despite how nice they look. They always think they're right, and smugly so. "You're holding it wrong", etc. The attitude is endemic.
Did you allow a few days to pass and then review the conversation log? Sometimes we see a tone that we weren't aware of at the time.
Also, IIRC/AFAIK, only macOS App Store-distributed apps have the ability to use parts of iCloud, especially w.r.t. data synchronization.
Also, if you already have iOS App Store versions of your apps, then Mac App Store is not much of a stretch.
For example I almost never use apps outside of the App Store and brew.
It's great to be able have updates and purchases managed in one place and if I ever get a new computer I can simply login to my account and re-download everything in seconds.
This is misinformation - you can still side-load apps on macOS.
Also, app review initially neglected to mention the specific problem, instead simply hand-waving about the rule against mentioning prerelease features.
Interestingly, that's probably how most customers are handled by many of the submitted apps, if at all.
But, __the escalation features__ are clichéd Catch-22-esque lunacy, and the actual information you receive in order to ascertain which part of the big state machine caused the rejection is non-existent.
If this was how a government worked, I'd expect literal "shoot a leader in broad daylight and storm their palace" levels of unrest in a week.
Apple (and other corps) are perfectly capable of reasoning beyond the almighty dollar. Tim Cook did it, presumably, in a rather famous incident yelling down someone on the earnings call questioning apple's decision to spend extra cash on environmentally friendlier packaging and distribution processes. Possibly Tim really is a short sighted moron who just thinks its worth wasting money on the environment ('wasting money' in the sense of the amoral stockholder only, of course!), but I'm assuming someone of Tim's caliber is a bit more intelligent than that, and Tim's thought through the (potential) brand damage, let alone the benefits of exuding an imagine of being environmentally friendlier than needed. Which isn't just "brand", but also staving off government intervention.
So, given that Tim and co are presumably capable of thinking through the repercussions of how the company operates, are they truly making the call that causing people the kind of pain and frustration that makes posts like this rise to the top of hackernews is somehow 'worth it', or are they, at least in this highly specific regard, short-sighted morons / dangerously uninformed about how their own company's processes work?
I just do not understand. Whatever it costs to stop pissing off and chasing away developers for your platform whilst arming the masses to demand regulatory intervention HAS to be worth it. And if Apple and co can't see that, I say; Heck yeah. Bring on the fucking regulators. I know and accept it'll suck and they'll make a hash of it, but odds are good it won't be such a shitshow as what app review is today, and examples need to be made.
Because these posts have been here for over a decade and will be here for decades to come. Because the App Store is not about developers. It's about users. And being a human-curated process there will often be mistakes and people on Twitter complaining. But users really like curation and so the status quo is very much likely to remain.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/07/study-finds-scam-top-pa...
Those mistakes work both ways. Sometimes apps are approved that shouldn't have received approval.
I understand I am biased by only seeing stories from developers who have issues getting apps approved, but these stories rarely end with a reasonable outcome.
Secondly, if this was expected and reasonable then I would be hearing about all the painful rejections from the Android store.
In the same manner I would expect to see all the complaints about AWS shuttering people's accounts with no recourse given in the same way that Google kills people's accounts. Or Genius Bar staff having to go to the toilet in bottles because Apple doesn't give them breaks.
Sometimes companies are shitty to their customers and employees, and they can do this in different ways. It doesn't mean we shouldn't point them out in the hopes that they are recognised and improved upon.
That's fine, but anything coming out from Apple (including the reasonable mistakes) are treated as the word of God, so correcting those mistakes are more difficult than they should be.
Perhaps they should put another human on the other side that checks the first human.
Robots, saving us all time and energy!
Does anyone have a good link to a guide for dealing with the App Store reviewers' capriciousness? Or is it simply a roll of the dice, no matter how closely one follows the Apple documentation?
Future apps that I have plans for will need to take advantage of hardware-specific features; I see this as a foot in the door.
But if I can't get it in, I'll just market the webapp and pivot my strategy for future products.
It’s annoying, but it’s not a huge deal.
I’ve thought about this from time to time and thought it might be a fun pastime to create a collection of these.
"Good morning-cycle citizen. Your publication contains REDACTED which you have to remove because you are not allowed to mention it in your security clearance. Good day-cycle."
The most successful strategy I've seen so far is to summarise the entire conversation so far in every single message you send.
I've also found, like other commenters in this thread, that we are now much better versed in Apple's rules than their own reviewers. So it can help to include quotes from their rules in the conversation summary.