Hacker News Reader

Comment by smooc | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting is that we seem to perceive the App Store Review process as some kind of black and white thing, while it isn't. Like a pure function that only works with the input variables provided and no side effects. Guess what, there is an actual human on the other side that is reviewing your app (with support of automation tools obviously). That person will make mistakes, will bring his/her own opinion and might not be consistent and often won't be very elaborate. Kind of refreshing actually.

Interestingly, that's probably how most customers are handled by many of the submitted apps, if at all.

View on HN

No, it's a distopian fucking horrorshow. You're right, of course. Humans are involved, it's not consistent, you're witnessing a state machine where 'opinion and carefulness of the human(s) that are part of this process' is a significant chunk of how it works.

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.

If Apple makes you this unhinged then don't buy their products and avoid reading anything about them.

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.

Me not buying their products doesn't stop my users from doing so, or my employer from demanding we support them. Also you've clearly never been on the submitting side of the app store, this "careful curation" often misses blatant violations and instead nags for weeks on minor or non-existent issues while refusing to elaborate.

Is it truly about users if scammy paid apps rise to the tops of the charts?

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/07/study-finds-scam-top-pa...

"Guess what, there is an actual human on the other side that is reviewing your app (with support of automation tools obviously). That person will make mistakes…"

Those mistakes work both ways. Sometimes apps are approved that shouldn't have received approval.

Yes but it’s incredibly concerning that greater scrutiny isn’t being paid to apps at the top of the charts. What are their priorities if they’re going after cases like the OP?

So if there is a human on the other side that makes mistakes all the time, we can't complain about it?

Perhaps they should put another human on the other side that checks the first human.

Someone should make a game like Papers Please, in which you are an app store reviewer.

Something tells me the App Store would reject this game :)

That's exactly the reason why a rejection has to point to the exact point that causes the rejection

> That person will make mistakes, will bring his/her own opinion and might not be consistent and often won't be very elaborate.

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.

Isn’t this only a good thing if the human being on the other end makes reasonable decisions in the interest of (1) the App Store and (2) iOS developers?

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.

Do we get to read the stories that end with a reasonable outcome? I highly doubt it.

Are you suggesting that GP is biased by only seeing stories from developers who have issues getting apps approved? It sure seems so.

I thought my comment made my awareness of this bias crystal clear...

Of course not, and we know this. However we also don't hear all the horror stories.

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.

You must love going to the DMV

Reply on news.ycombinator.com