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Comment by interpol_p | Hacker News Reader

It is wild that even a company like Panic, as well-loved, and with one of the richest histories on Mac, gets the same treatment as anyone else from App Store Review.

In a way it's kind of good to know that there is no special treatment, but this is poor behaviour towards the developers who made your platform.

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> It is wild that even a company like Panic, as well-loved, and with one of the richest histories on Mac, gets the same treatment as anyone else from App Store Review.

This is because App Store reviewers are ignorant of Mac history and of most everything else, as evidenced by their frequently brain-dead rejections. (I say this as an App Store developer myself.)

> This is because App Store reviewers are ignorant of Mac history and of most everything else, as evidenced by their frequently brain-dead rejections

Microsoft's App Store reviewers are vendor staff from the same agencies that provide fungible CSR staff - the App Store reviewers I personally know are all good people (and it's unfair of me to put them in the same category as CSR workers) buuuuuut they aren't all computer culture historians. So I assume it's similar at Apple (though I gather Apple prefers to have FTEs under their direct control instead of using agencies?)

Now I'm curious how Apple handles the reportedly higher-than-average employee churn in those roles, as I heard that 6-18 months was a typical stint at MS's App Store reviews office at TEKSystems on Willows Rd - though I know people that stayed in that job for over 6 years, but they were never able to transition into a blue-badge role and were stuck as Orange Badges - which just isn't right.

Not quite the same treatment as anyone. Certainly corporate giants get warnings paired with face-to-face executive meetings instead of mysterious rejections:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...

That's overselling it a bit. They made a few apps back in the 2000s. Nothing very memorable.

And why shouldn't they get the same treatment? Fair's fair.

Now I think you may be underselling it a bit. :)

Being on the developer spotlight (https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=t4n6e4wo) kind of indicates they’re a bit more than “nothing very memorable”.

At least, Apple certainly thought so. Not every developer gets a spotlight.

Panic are multiple time Apple design award winners/nominees.

(Mac & iOS) [1]

2003, 2004, 2005(x2), 2013, 2021

Perhaps Apple was overselling how good they are? /s

[1] https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Panic

Um...for those of us who were using Macs back when it wasn't clear how much longer Apple would be around—and especially for those of us involved with web stuff—Panic is nothing short of iconic. They're one of the few indie Mac devs who've managed to keep it going for decades, and their work has been consistently excellent.

So if I were Tim Apple, I would be a little worried by someone like Sasser saying "we tried to launch our crazy popular game on your App Store and ultimately didn't because one of your idiot reviewers gave us the runaround." That's a little like, I don't know, some record label passing on Nirvana because a junior talent scout thought that "the guys looked kind of greasy and the name sounds stupid."

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