We made something. We use it. We love it. Apple rejected it | Hacker News Reader

We made something. We use it. We love it. Apple rejected it

huemanapp.com

411 pointsmeirish310 comments

First of all, that sounds like a really cool idea for an app. I want it.

But secondly, of all the app rejection stories I've ever heard... this one is the easiest to fix. Just add some more features, who cares, and resubmit it.

Ideas: annotate/categorize the things that are making you happy/unhappy. Maybe have categories/icons for them. (Friends, party, loneliness, exercise, ate well, ate bad, had sex, no sex, fought, made up, my team won, etc. -- there really aren't that many fundamental things.) Then also produce charts showing how your happiness correlates with those items.

Heck, you might even be able to produce an amazing academic paper or two with the dataset you produce. Or at least some really cool and fascinating blog entries from the data.

(Personally, I'd rather rate my happiness on a 1-10 scale rather than compare with yesterday, and also maybe be asked 3-4 times a day. Maybe features let you pick those.)

I actually did this policy to get one of my apps in the store. As more people eventually use it (and presumably good reviews roll in), I anticipate that I will be able to remove the features which I didn't think were needed.

On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of apple having editorial review over apps for being too simple. The only app which I feel might be too simple is an additional fart or flashlight app. And I'm still inclined to let those be distributed in some way (if not directly through the app store process).

>I anticipate that I will be able to remove the features which I didn't think were needed.

This is a really bad idea. While you might think that its impossible, some of your users are going to absolutely love the useless functionality that you added to appease Apple. When you remove it, you are going to receive an influx of 1-star reviews.

I think you can make moderately safe choice if you have the usage data. I.e. if you see 0.5% of active users use some functionality, you can remove it. It can help rest of the users (make the app more simple) and you as well (smaller code base). Also adds possibility to add another feature without cluttering the app.

> I.e. if you see 0.5% of active users use some functionality, you can remove it.

Grrr.

The implication behind this statement is that if most users don't use something, the one's that do don't find it useful.

I regard this implication to be false, and damaging.

> It can help rest of the users (make the app more simple)

If a user interface is well designed, then features that someone doesn't use won't get in their way.

> The implication behind this statement is that if most users don't use something, the one's that do don't find it useful.

Not at all. The implication is that if few people use a feature, few people will be affected if you remove it. They may be really, really upset, but there won't be many of them.

Would you refund those people automatically after removing the feature they use? Since this is not anymore the same value proposition as before. One small feature can make the whole app not anymore worthy those original 1.99$ user paid for.

Can we get rid of the absurd disgust over the huge price of 99 cents people pay for apps? If he thinks the app is better being simpler, let him make his app better. It doesn't matter if he "offers" a refund or not. They can ask Apple for one, and Apple will give it to them. Don't act like the guy is a jerk for removing a feature he deems unnecessary because someone might be upset over the 12 cents of value lost when it very well could improve the experience of the other 99.5% of his users.

I'm sorry, but for 99 cents you don't get complete control over my time and decision making process. Feel free to make suggestions, but for the love of God don't "tell me" that "I need" to make feature X for you. I particularly enjoy 1-3 star reviews that say it's great but it needs X to improve review. As if they would actually come back and change it when it gets X. I promise they don't.

Noone is complaining about 99¢, but the principle stays. One small feature that noone except me uses if removed makes the product/service unusable for me. I could have paid 99€, I could have paid 99$ or 999%, it doesn't matter for the topic.

If you remove that one feature under my feet, the app is to me worth nothing. I would be ok using the old version of application that still has that feature, but in case of a service or phone app where I simply can't use the old version or easily rollback to the one, I would ask for refund, regardless of the original price.

You could set the release data of the app like 2 weeks in the future and have some sort of webservice that you use to enable or disable app features. You could disable the bogus features after the app has passed Apple's review, but before the app is visible to end-users.

I think deceiving Apple is the very worst idea ever. If they catch you cheating, your app will be booted from the app store - and rightly so.

Legally so, but not rightly so. Apple has arbitrary and unreasonable rules. They are not in a morally justified position when they exert those rules, even though they are legally able to.

Now, in this case, it is obvious what the right move is for the developer. They have to ship their app on android or windows phone instead of iphone. If apple refuses entry into their walled garden, the developers should take their app and go somewhere else. If enough apps do this and become popular, apple will change their rules.

I think the jump from unreasonable to immoral is rather larger than you seem to imply.

Shouldn't we think of the App Store in the same way that people and companies cannot force a retailer to stock their own product.

Why do people continue to use this terrible analogy? The App Store is not like Walmart.

A better analogy would be a car company that forced you to come to them for all of your service and for any after-market work you wanted to do.

Your analogy only address's the issue form the consumers point of view. What about if you make a product, should you be able to force a distributor to carry your product?

No, you shouldn't, and never did I suggest that. I was addressing your claim that we should think about the App Store like a retailer; which it isn't.

It functions as such. Developers make a product, they convince Apple to stock that product, and Apple takes a cut when they sell it. You can argue that it shouldn't be like that, but you can't really argue that it ISN'T like that.

The only thing you can really argue is that they should allow other app stores to exist that aren't under their control. And frankly, they do exist on jailbroken phones and if you want that you can jailbreak your phone, or get an Android.

Because it fits. Do you think that Wal-Mart doesn't have rules for vendors?

Perhaps Apple is more mercurial and arbitrary. But the institutional arrogance is the same.

As a manufacturer, Wal-Mart is your best friend and worst enemy. They pay you promptly and order lots of stuff. But they demand steep discounts and punish you harshly if you fail to meet commitments, and you must be able to rapidly ramp up your supply chain when their demand grows.

I think it's still rightly so on Apple's part: Apple can set the rules however they like because the App Store is their playground. If you want to play there you have to abide by their rules - even if those rules are contradictory or arbitrary.

I do agree that developers should take their apps to other platforms (most notably Android). I don't expect Apple will change their rules, but customers may switch to other devices. I've personally switched from iPhone to Nexus 5 because some of the apps & features I wanted were blocked by Apple.

Apple's rules aren't arbitrary, they are built around a fairly clear set of aims about which Apple have been fairly public. You may disagree with those aims but that doesn't mean the rules are unreasonable or arbitrary.

I'd also say that as an iOS user and an Apple customer, one of the things I like about the AppStore is that there is a degree of curation, that they do have rules. I don't agree with all of those rules but over time the rules have improved and, on balance, I personally like the end result more than the alternative.

What is more arguable as unreasonable is that the AppStore is the only means of loading Apps to your phone without a developer license but I don't think changing the AppStore is the right solution.

Personally I'd argue that sideloading should be possible (though would need to be enabled somewhere down in the guts of the settings with warnings and all), but I wouldn't change the AppStore which is a service with a specific aim which it meets pretty well.

That's fine - they have a road map of useful functionality - just add that and don't have to worry about removing it later.

I would like to counter this advice by saying that I don't think acquiescing to the whims of walled garden rulers is the best solution. If your vision was to create what you have already created, how could you modify it to a product that you think is worse for your users because its what Apple wants? It pains me just reading suggestions about implementing these tacked on functions.

That's painful, but those users will be even worse off if they can't use the app at all. If the creator's goal is to serve his users, and not his pride, then he'll have to swallow it and play by the rules.

Simple answer is to not service apple until you've built a following on Android. They'll accept an app that is coveted.

Fuck stupid rules!

If you want control over your own vision, you don't build for Apple iThings. You build for open platforms. Walled gardens are not for people with a vision that conflicts with the walled garden owner's.

Apple? Fuck them. Their "Eden" is a place without knowledge of sex, without knowledge of freedom, etc. And if you eat the forbidden fruit (jailbreak your device), then beware the consequences.

Sometimes I wonder if future historians will think we literally believed the religious imagery we used in technological flamewars.

Future historian: the answer is no, we don't. (Just in case).

Apple? Fuck them.

Fully agree. The Apple app store 'universum' became too large in order to allow Apple to continue censoring it. Government need to (somehow) enforce alternative app stores.

Until this happens, boycott Apple (or bear the consequence of your conduct which only supports Apple).

On the other hand, it's not bad that Apple cares deeply about the apps they carry. If there was an alternative store, I'd buy an iPhone at once. (Well, would have, not sure if I'd be able to part again from my Jolla now).

I don't think the answer to everything we are annoyed at should be more government regulation, especially in this case.

If the cons of deving for Apple's app store outweigh the pros, then people will stop submitting to the app store. Simple as that. If people want apps that they can't get on iOS more than they want iOS, they'll move to a different platform.

But I don't think we should be all "Oh, Apple didn't allow an app I want. GOVERNMENT, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE THIS APP SO REGULATE THIS". Just get a different phone.

If it's a few huge multinationals vs. individuals it's not so easy 'to just get another phone'.

Isn't society/government here to provide general regulations? Ok, some are stupid but (at least in Europe) many are reasonably good. And e.g. protect a consumer where you also could have said 'his problem, he made a mistake'. Or regulations about people's health where you could e.g. say, oh, why does he/she eat that many burgers?

Why should a government not take care that app/content can flow down to consumers freely?

You don't necessarily need to cater to their whims. I know it's just one example but I had a long back and forth with them over the course of 2 months, over an app that they claimed offered not enough features. Many emails, phone calls, and replies later, I still wasn't gonna bloat the app just to get it through. I appealed to the review board as a last step. It took them 2 weeks to review my appeal and they finally let the app in as is.

My point is that the reviewers are human and don't necessarily have the best judgement. If you think you have a strong case, you should appeal to the board. They do give it a fair trial.

I actually really like the concept of relating your happiness in a binary fashion on a day to day basis relative to the previous day. With each previous day forming a control the results can be dynamic and very in a range far greater than 1 to 10.

I agree. When you have to rate something from 1-10, the results will probably be skewed. Better/Worse than yesterday makes it extremely easy to get a "real" value.

I think you could take this further. There are multiple components to happiness that could generally be viewed as on or off.

Are you feeling energized or tired? Do you feel like you are doing something useful with your life? Are you achieving your goals? Do people appreciate you for who you are? Do you have enough time in the day to do what you need? Are you angry with anyone close to you?

etc...

The system could then total up your responses to come up with the final score for the day.

Taking things further, the system can then analyze your results over time. Say once a month or so you do a deeper analysis. If you rarely feel energized, it could perhaps drill down into this further with questions about your diet, sleep patterns etc... Once it has worked out that you are not getting enough sleep it could make recommendations to boost this area and then track it's effectiveness.

Now of course to do all this would require some experts to work out what components make up happiness and create the questions. Alternatively this could be crowd sourced. If everyone entered what they felt made them happy, this could then be kept in a database. The various components could be sent at random to each user to answer and the effectiveness tracked. Various machine learning algorithms could then be used to tailor each component to the individual to come up with their personalized happiness plan.

Those extra features might be enough to satisfy Apple..

Don't make any of those categories/icons rounded rects with a label though. I just got rejected for that and had to remove the rounded rect part. I had been using them in a manner similar to Panic's Status Board app to handle configuration of a photo sales app[0].

0: http://studioproapp.com

You got rejected for using rounded rects? What rule did they invoke?

My guess would be "given the iOS 7 aesthetic, this looks like a button".

8.3: Apps which appear confusingly similar to an existing Apple product or advertising theme will be rejected

We found that your app is too similar to iOS springboard icons, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

Specifically, the rejection relates to the use of rounded icons like Apple's iOS springboard icons.

I was rejected in a similar way for my very first iPhone app many years ago. I wrote the Slicehost app, and it had a tab for managing DNS. I had a friend draw the icons for me, and for DNS I went with a globe. The globe my friend drew looked a lot like the globe used for switching your keyboard to another language, so they rejected me for that. I changed the DNS icon to something else and resubmitted and it was accepted.

The funny thing, though, is that I submitted two versions of the app: a paid version and a free version. They both had the globe icon, and one of them was accepted with it.

Perhaps they don't actually review all parts of all apps? Would make sense to do some sort of statistical testing. Unless you told anyone (and people started submitting 10 (identical) versions of every app) -- you could probably be about as effective as if you did fully check every app...

I think the real answer is that human beings are reviewing the apps. (Machines now at least check for apps making private API calls and stuff like that, but that wasn't the case in the beginning of the App Store.) There are a lot of different reasons for rejecting apps, and there are a lot of apps being submitted every week, so it makes sense for violations to occasionally slip through the cracks.

So the answer is feature bloat.

Here's another idea: Let's build a compiler that automatically adds features to apps that appear too simple.

The compiler should be able to learn from descriptions of existing apps what kinds of things are currently fashionable and find an unobtrusive way to integrate them into your app.

No need for a special "compiler," the team already has a plan to add features: "The next couple planned releases on our roadmap will heavily rely on native iOS functions and code to include things like tagging, additional graph views and scrubbing, ability to add media. etc... And by eventually letting people combine their data, you will be able to see how their relative happiness aligns to other users, a neighborhood and even the world."

Rating your happiness from 1 to 10 would make it easy for the scale to drift. How do you compare how you felt today to how you felt 8 months back, the last time you issued a 10?

I think comparing with yesterday is a great way to do this: I still know exactly how I felt yesterday, and I know how I feel today.

Agree - partially. I often made the experience in my life, that if I undergo a period of bad mood (especially depression) that lasts for weeks or months, I don't realize how down I am. But when that period is finally over, I suddenly become aware of how deep down I actually was. The comparison to yesterday might be a clever trick to deal with that inability of perception. The pitfall that might araise from that rating system now is that you might tend to rate positive changes higher than negative changes or vice versa. If that is the case, it would introduce a drift again.

THIS :)

Or maybe they're making a mood tracker for their future Healthbook app and they're trying to put a block on similar apps...

Sounds familiar.. I made a similar app last year, and had to add features - the ability to track a number of questions, curved thumb sliders, social media integration, etc. but it did get accepted, and has been doing pretty well.

Like this, it started as something I wanted to use, and grew from there. slidersapp.com if anyone is interested.

(I am wondering where to go with it next... online platform, android port, etc.)

that looks great, and if you don't have a browser accessible way to consume that data, i'd suggest going that direction.

Yup, the browser based graphing of sliders and how they correlate to each other might be the next project... simple authentication, etc.

We'll see. Thanks!

The app in this article is rubbish, and there are several others like it already in the app store. This was probably just an advertisement for the company, and since HN has knee-jerk reactions to anything containing the word Apple, it seems to be working.

Have you ever seen a good movie? Think for a second about that movie. What made it good?

Now imagine if you could make that movie even better for yourself. Imagine this movie was distributed along with a plastic box with a few knobs and dials on it. Wouldn't it be a better movie if you could turn the knobs to adjust the parameters of the movie -- there really aren't that many fundamental parameters to movies. You could adjust the heights of the actors, or the amount of furniture in a scene, or the physicality of risk and harm that characters endured, or even just add more redheads.

What if that box also asked what kind of movie you're in the mood for, or who your other favorite directors are. Then the movie could switch out some plot elements and style decisions to become a little bit more like another movie you wanted to watch.

Or what if instead of watching one particular movie you could just add movies together. Like say you wanted to watch Terminator 2, but alternating scenes with Clueless. Or maybe you could just put picture-in-picture, with all your favorite movies together on the same screen!

How great would that be!

What if the movie came with the full set of trailers (preview, theatrical, etc.) for the movie? And had a director's commentary track? With a second audio track that had the actors telling jokes? Or even just take all of the funny moments that happened while filming, where people missed their lines, and put them on the same DVD? Maybe they could even throw in an entirely different ending for the movie that was replaced or removed late in the process?

Seriously: I appreciate the point you are trying to make here, but you chose a horrible example that I think actually argues that adding random features isn't a big deal :/. Besides, they already claim to have a bunch of features planned anyway: it isn't like the developers are seemingly of the "this is the exact app that should be released, and there should be no random additions or extra features added, as doing so would ruin the whole experience"...

> The next couple planned releases on our roadmap will heavily rely on native iOS functions and code to include things like tagging, additional graph views and scrubbing, ability to add media. etc... And by eventually letting people combine their data, you will be able to see how their relative happiness aligns to other users, a neighborhood and even the world.

(It is also possible, however, that I totally misunderstood your response, and you are actually saying that having a happiness index that you kept track of on a moment-to-moment basis while watching a movie would let you optimize the movie according to your personal tastes. I feel like that's lower probability--more dots need connecting for that--but if I did actually misunderstand your comment I'm sorry that my response just adds to the confusion.)

I guess what I'm getting at is that some of the nicest things in this world are what they are because of spaces not filled in, or aspects that aren't shoved into tropes, or—if you'll excuse the cliché—notes not played.

I think we're all in agreement that this sounds like a cool app. I'm just lamenting the lack of creative authority given to its developers, regardless of whatever their future plans may be.

Yet throwing in an instrumental version of the song seems to generally work out fine (or an alternative version that is a duet with Rihanna); you seem to be stuck on "there are bad things that can be added to something that make it worse" when you are simply plucking examples chosen to be uniquely the most bad, even when there are obvious examples that no one has a problem with for the exact same cases that no one has a problem with (and are even semi-expected these days).

I mean, a movie release on DVD with just be movie and nothing more is simply not done and many people would consider it cheap and disappointing. The reaction most people who have to a movie that is only 20 minutes long is or a song that was only 30 seconds long is going to be similar: I doubt many movie theaters, radio stations, or content distributors, would consider the "short" sufficient.

In this case, we know the developers have "notes left to play", and could spend the time to do those now. Clearly, I would be the first to point at Apple and say "this is not a legitimate selection criteria" (sufficiently so that even bothering to say it explicitly is kind if redundant ;P), but if I were those developers... this is just a really self-defeating reaction that is not likely to sway either Apple or the people who actually like Apple not wanting to sell things that don't feel "complete enough".

> What if the movie came with the full set of trailers (preview, theatrical, etc.) [...] could even throw in an entirely different ending for the movie [...]

Awesome idea! Throw this in a locked device with some kind of DRM to make sure our viewer has a fully immersive uniform experience, and I'm ready to throw my life savings at it.

(Apologies for that, I couldn't resist pointing out to you where that train of thought has taken the market. ;) )

DVDs seem to still be selling pretty well, despite utterly and completely broken DRM.

That would be legitimately great. See, for example, The Phantom Edit, or Brokeback to the Future, or Girl Talk's All Day.

Could you rephrase your comment without the sarcasm so I can see what point you're actually trying to make?

All those features are hogshit, completely irrelevant, and extremely complicated and difficult to achieve. I have never once watched a movie and said "I didn't like that movie. Let me watch it again with taller actors and more rounded furniture."

You don't have to. But those features might allow someone else to mash it up into something better. Like the three examples in my comment.

It would probably work out awful. To quote Ford :

"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse"

The irony of it all is that the top app on the app store is a sleep cycle alarm which seems to do little beyond graphing your sleep routines.

Maybe it's because they charge for that and apple are happier with "simple" apps if they can make money from them

You know that you have achieved perfection in design not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to take away. --Antoin de Saint-Exüpery

    I'd rather rate my happiness on a 1-10 scale rather than
    compare with yesterday, and also maybe be asked 3-4 times
    a day.

I use TagTime for this on Android: http://www.jefftk.com/p/happiness-logging

With all their patent trolling and absurd tyrannical control over the app store, I have no idea why so many tech-saavy people still love Apple.

IMHO, They don't love Apple perse but some of their products. In my case atleast, i don't like Apple but i would like to have a macbook-pro or something of that sort.

I would also like to have a retina MBP. Dat screen resolution and battery...

My current POS Dell XPS laptop lasts 2 hours max, has a 17 inch 1080p screen, and weights a ton. Worst of all, the Windows drivers that Dell provides don't even work properly and cause frequent BSODs, so I can't even play games.

I would love to have a retina MPB, but unfortunately, I can't afford it.

That said, not all Windows laptops are that bad :) , I never had such a bad experience (not with Gateway, HP, IBM/Lenovo or Asus), but then again, I never bought a Dell either :P .

I'm also willing to wager you paid nowhere near the retina MBP price for the Dell :) (though I guess you are more likely to have a bad experience with a high-priced Windows laptop than with a MBP, complaints about the 2011 batch aside)

I agree, not all Windows laptops are bad. My sister bought a cheap $700 Dell Inspiron and it's pretty nice. I actually like the Windows operating system, since I'm really productive on it. But I think the vendors need to get their shit together. There are a lot of glaring problems caused by OEM incompetence, like providing the wrong drivers and preinstalling bloatware.

For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to buy a $1300 laptop before starting college. I really regret making that decision. I probably should have spent a few hundred dollars more for a retina MBP instead.

We love what Apple did for the industry, we love using their products, we have varying levels of problems with them as a company. Some are very high, some are low, but that's unrelated to what you're perceiving, which is a love of what they did for the industry and the products that we use.

> which is a love of what they did for the industry

Like promoting useless patent litigations of 'rounded corners', 'slide to unlock' nature?

I think that was covered by "we have varying levels of problems with them as a company." But way to cherry pick.

I can't speak for what the grandparent commenter meant by his problems with the company, but I think that was one of their 'biggest contributions' and needed to be mentioned.

An iPhone developer and a founder of a company passionately argued with me once saying "what if they have found out the 'perfect radius' for their corners where their phone looks the best (say 5.6 mm), which no one else could find before? It definitely deserves to be patented".

I was facepalm. Many people just don't think it's a problem, and don't realize how it is ultimately bad for them and their children.

You can pick one part of my answer and isolate it from the rest if you like, but I made it clear: we have varying problems with what they do as a company, but many of us admire their larger impact. If you think controlling slide to unlock compares to popularizing the personal computer and the touch-screen smartphone, I guess we're just not going to agree. But I'm 99% sure we both agree that their patent litigation is ridiculous.

I used to admire Apple back in the day, not any more. For example, 2011 MBP laptops are having huge problems with the GPU and Apple is saying nothing. The user forums at Apple are overloaded with complaints, but no employee dignifies that with an answer. To me that seems like very bad customer service.

Hep I have one of them. 2.7GHz i7 with 16Gb of RAM just sitting here rotting because it's unreliable and unsaleable.

Popularizing walled gardens? Yah I'm never going to forget that.

ever.

And going "nuclear" on Android because they felt that their iOS was soooo original it should be protected by all patents, trademarks and laws in place. Apple is the Disney of IT, seriously.

Presumably they went nuclear on Android because they felt betrayed when a close partner of their came out with a clone of their product, something Apple had a history with that nearly killed it.

What do you mean a "clone of their product" ? Desktop PCs had big icons on screen for years, there was nothing new or even remotely original in having big icons on a screen for an mobile OS. That should be declared an obvious invention and not worth of protection at all. The main new thing that they did was to use a touch screen that can be operated with fingers and gestures, but hey, even that idea was not new either. Frankly, no matter how highly you think of Apple's products, nothing of what they do is really, truly original.

Once you see / use them, they become obvious inventions. You know, lightbulbs are so boring right now. Nothing original about them.

Before Apple came up with iPhone, I had a freaking Ericsson brick thingy. None of Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung were innovating. None of those old, non original ideas were in any of those devices. Nokia had a webkit browser with a ridiculous cursor that you operated with that joystick thingy. I'm glad that Apple actually pushed them forward.

So yes, I think Apple has original products and they are innovating.

Bollocks, Sony Ericsson was innovating, and I still feel that the M600i that I owned was one of the most innovative phones ive ever used. Still to this day no phone comes close in keyboard ability (seriously, go google the M600 or P1i), and UIQ3 was this wicked blend of smartphone power with a dumbphone-esque interface: something the iPhone did but improved on massively.

I use Apple everything. I love Apple products. But to say there wasn't any innovation happening before it in the phone sector misses some really cool things.

PS. I would pay all the money in the world for an updated P1i, same qwerty rocker keyboard, capacitive 3" touchscreen @ 720p running Android. One can dream, right?

Palm had the grid icon layout for years before apple did it, but nobody would confuse an old palm device with an iphone when actually using it, and palm in fact had to throw it out and start all over with the pre to deliver an iphone competitor.

There's a big difference between a good concept and a good execution of a concept. Apple have always been brilliant at execution, even if they don't have many original concepts (they don't do basic research). Is it not innovative to take a good idea and execute it better than anyone before? I find that a hard thing to dismiss. However, now that they are on top of the world, it would be nice to see them invest in open basic research to give back to the community where they got all their ideas and technologies from, like microsoft does with microsoft research.

Palm was influenced by the Newton, the device that coined the term PDA (actually coined by John Scully) which came out before the Palm Pilot. Computing didn't stat in the 21st century, neither did it start in the 1990's.

RE giving back to the community; FreeBSD, CUPS, WebKit, LLVM and Clang to name a few. Notice I haven't claimed that any of these were directly invented by Apple, but all have varying levels of investment and contribution from Apple.

This is all out there on the internet. It takes a couple of seconds to look up with whatever search engine fits in with your ideology.

iOS 1 was an inevitable jump from Palm OS and the early days of touch screen. The tech had been in demos before, but there was such a lack of UX work beforehand that it never took off. That, and capacitive screens/advancing tech.

The thing is, Android copied most of the UX (and I say that as someone that likes Android a lot more than iOS, and I had a Palm before).

I agree that Apple's UX was a significant advance. (See this 2007 review talking about "paradigm-shifting interface"

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/03/iphone-review-part-1-hard... )

I presume you mean Google - were they close partners? I admit I wasn't following Apple (at all) before iPhone.

Or maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electron.... ?

The iPhone is really where they started to work closely together. Here's Eric jokingly proposing a merger at the iphone launch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9h...

Steve comments again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkXa3eTV88

The Mac's 30th anniversary a few weeks gave the original Mac launch videos a lot of recent play where Gates and Microsoft basically played an eerily similar role to Google with the iPhone launch. Of course MS, like Google did want to do everything.

It's clear as day why Steve felt betrayed by Google. As he said in the internal town hall:

We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake teams at Google want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. "Don't be evil is a load of crap"

{I've edited in the two updates/corrections from the bottom}

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/31/jobs-town-all

Eric Schmidt was on the board at Apple.

It was so original.

I can't believe anyone contests this.

I remember seeing an iPhone for the first time. Compared to all other phones it was 10 years ahead in vision. All other phones were suddenly ludicrously laid out, with stupid designs. Even the settings section for the iPhone blew every single other phone in existence out of the water. Something that simple, that essential, had been revolutionised by this thoughtful new way at looking at phone interfaces.

Android, on that very day, looked like every other phone. 10 years behind, old, tired, pathetic, no vision what so ever.

In less than 6 months the android team lifted every single iPhone design element, added very little of their own and unveiled what is possibly one of the biggest design rip-offs in tech history.

I can understand why Jobs was pissed.

I agree 100% with you. It was very original and a very good product.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't have competition. Competition is a basic requirement for a functional economy.

Which is why the patient system is broken.

Yeah I remember also there was so much gnashing of teeth that it didn't HAVE A TACTILE KEYBOARD! It's just for show OMG! Japanese phones have had more gizmos^H^H^H^H^H^H features like FOREVER!!

Besides the interface, I thought it was interesting that it had a real unix based OS underneath, which would pay off in the future as phone processors became more powerful.

It's sortof funny looking back. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess.

It blew every other phone, but it wasn't that original over PDAs. I had a Windows 6.5 pda then, and I thought the iPhone was way cooler and well-designed. Of course it was inmensely superior to my PDA, but not so incredibly original. It didn't do anything at all I wasn't already doing with PDAs, it just did some of them (chiefly, web browsing) way better, most of them in a cooler way (pinch to zoom, animations), and even a few, slightly worse (browsing while listening to music).

Apple has this fame of original crazy geniouses that have invented X or Y. They have mostly taken other's ideas and perfected them. Perfected them a lot, admittedly; even may be taken them to a new level of awesomeness with a great vision of on which details it was better to improve.

I love apple products, don't take me wrong. They deserve a lot of credit for the iPod, the iPhone, iOS, the iPad...

I think it was extremely childish of Jobs to get so pissed.

Jobs was pissed for two reasons; one, Android copied a lot of things from Apple and two, the company that was doing the copying had their CEO (and a very technical CEO at that) on the Apple board of directors.

I'm not sure why people always ignore the second part of why Jobs was pissed. It was the Schmidt one-two sucker punch that really pissed him off.

> I think it was extremely childish of Jobs to get so pissed.

I've never thought of Jobs as being someone mature and reasonable anyway. He was already like that in his younger years whenever the competition heated up. He didn't change.

This is complete bollocks.

http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Li...

The video he presents as evidence does exactly the opposite! That is the video we all point to when we say the whole interface was lifted from iPhone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1FJHY...

That is the exact old skool interface that was so terrible.

That is Android pre-iPhone.

His only argument is 'well look later, there's some touch too'. But that's even more damning as the touch was so badly designed and clunky.

Watch the whole thing if you want. Notice the use of right-click menus. Notice the zoom had to use buttons. The program switcher is lifted from Vista and looks nothing like what actually happened, which was a iPhone copied home button.

What the video shows is that Android had an interface and it was nothing like the one that came out 6 months later which was wholesale lifted from the iPhone.

Windows Mobile showed you didn't have to do it anything like Apple did, so why did android look so much like the iOS?

It's not bollocks; we now have Google engineers on record that they had to substantially rethink Android in the wake of the iPhone announcement.

> Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

> On the day Jobs announced the iPhone, the director of the Android team, Andy Rubin, was six hundred miles away in Las Vegas, on his way to a meeting with one of the myriad handset makers and carriers that descend on the city for the Consumer Electronics Show. He reacted exactly as DeSalvo predicted. Rubin was so astonished by what Jobs was unveiling that, on his way to a meeting, he had his driver pull over so that he could finish watching the webcast.

> “Holy crap,” he said to one of his colleagues in the car. “I guess we’re not going to ship that phone.”

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-...

This is not one of those Apple vs Google fights; it's straight up well-sourced journalism.

You're confusing aesthetic design with functional originality. The original iphone was very well designed, but it stood on the shoulders of PDAs and was a natural next step. Just as an open-sourced OS like Android was the next step.

Exactly. Everything was already in the PDAs. Apple just changed things a bit and made it cooler, but they did not invent anything.

> Compared to all other phones it was 10 years ahead in vision. All other phones were suddenly ludicrously laid out, with stupid designs.

You are wrong because you are looking at the wrong category for a comparison. Look at PDAs. PDAs had everything that the iPhone could do, more or less. And this, YEARS before the iPhone came out. I know it, because I had PDAs very early on and I remember making fun of the people thinking that the iPhone was so revolutionary at work because I had been doing the same stuff with my PDA for 5 years. Of course, the iPhone had a better browser, was easier to use, was more cool looking, but nonetheless it had nothing NEW in functionality over the previous PDAs. Comparing with phones is therefore irrelevant, the iPhone was PDA-Phone, thus being called a Smart-Phone later on by the mainstream media.

What about LLVM and Webkit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins

That's great, but nobody used it before Apple made it a thing.

Well, I used it every day. Apparently it was enough of a thing for Apple to notice it, too (or let's face it, the Mozilla people - like David Hyatt - they hired to gain the knowledge).

Did they notice it because it was good or did they notice it because it wasn't GPL?

Gecko wasn't GPL either. And Gecko was actually originally meant to be embedded by others, before the community decided to productize and do Firefox (originally Phoenix).

I'd like to think they noticed it because it was good. KHTML at the time had quite strong CSS support compared to its competition (not necessarily the best, but it competed well), had done some important advances in l18n support compared to others (e.g. strong support for bidi text layout), and the design of its render tree which e.g. allowed for hardware-accelerated layer compositing was later adopted by competitors like Gecko. It was a pretty good codebase.

Sure, it's been a decade since those events, and the majority of the engineering effort by now lies chiefly on the WebKit side of things. Apple employees working on WebKit have done a ton of good work, as have other stakeholders. Apple was an important factor both in terms of workforce increase and popularity increase for the project. But I think it's very legitimate to continue to credit the KDE community with its inception.

Neither was started by Apple and arguably in the case of WebKit they only contributed because it was hard not to.

Apple didn't create walled gardens either.

Who created LLVM and WebKit is irrelevant. Those projects wouldn't be as awesome as they are now without Apple's efforts and money.

Popularizing... like who else is doing that?

Apple can't popularize anything in the way they've done without millions of accomplices, who line up to hand over their money to Apple. What is Apple doing right that promoters of other platforms are not?

In my opinion they simply produce a better overall owner experience. All products/platforms have their warts, but warts and all, I find my life is easier and generally more pleasant when I use iphone instead of android and OS X instead of Windows or Linux for my desktop/laptops.

I bet you a majority of the customers don't even see those walls and yet still get to enjoy the positives that come from that approach. Yeah, why would a business continue to operate that way? Let's just make everything open as fuck and stand back to watch what happens.

Who's that "We" you are operating with?

there were palms treos before

Because of technical merit? Everything you mentioned is politics. I can see how that's not the most important to most people.

There's no pure technological achievement. Politics permeate engineering all the time. I'd rather say I despise Apple's misguided approach to patents than say its techinical merit is "more important". Because given Apple's position, both its techinical merits and its stupid litigations have been shaping the industry.

I love Apple for OSX, which so far remains at least as open as Windows and more pleasant to use. My phone is an Android, though. OSX and iOS are starting to seem like different companies these days.

I realize you're just trolling but the answer to your question is because people who love Apple don't see those parts of Apple as relevant to their opinion. Sometimes you meet people with outrageous body odor or hard to fathom beliefs, but other than that you love their insights or their willingness to participate, and so you don't think about them in the things you find objectionable, you think about them for the things you admire in them. I suspect that the things that are important to you, and result in your opinion of Apple, are the not the same things that are important to the people who admire Apple.

Love my MBP. Fairly excellent battery life. UNIX underpinnings and command line terminal paired and a well polished, usable GUI. And a trackpad that actually works.

Ditched iOS a good while ago.

>I have no idea why so many tech-saavy people still love Apple.

Good hardware offerings (beyond the "my custom built hot-rod has a faster CPU"), and a full blown UNIX desktop OS with a nice interface and access to all kinds of proprietary software and consumer/professional peripherals.

Plus "absurd tyrannical control over the app store"? Apple made the whole platform, API and market out of thin air, it's not like people have some inherent god-given right to have their apps featured in it. And still -- there are now over 800,000 apps on it -- if anything it's as lax as it comes for a closed market. Try developing for game consoles some day.

As for "patent trolling", I haven't see anything beyond all other companies, from Google to Oracle and MS, do.

As long as users are not allowed to install their own apps, Apple have "absurd tyrannical control" over iOS apps.

Well, as long as users could not care less, it doesn't count as "absurd tyrannical control" in my books.

Users are mostly unaware. You'd be surprised at how many users think Apple makes all of the apps in the App Store. I think the biggest problem is truth in advertisement. If it were properly regulated, getting an iPhone would be advertised as something more akin to leasing than purchasing.

s/users/most users/g

If I want to install software on a device that I bought, I should not need to jailbreak it. If I want to install software on a device that I bought, I should not need to buy a developer's license.

Well, in the abstract I agree.

But if the platform was built by someone else, he gets to set the rules.

And if the rules are lax enough, like the App Store is, and people using the platform dont mind much, then we don't have much of a case.

That's disingenuous. Other platforms are open; Apple sets the rules because they closed the platform. Their excuse for this was to improve security and reliability(?) SO now they're curating based on subjective standards of questionable merit.

If the app meets reliability and design standards, why not let the market decide? Its arrogance.

Every platform was built by somebody. If I buy batteries, should the engineer who designed those batteries (or, heck, Alessandro Volta) be able to place restrictions on the use of those batteries? If I buy a car, should the seller be able to place restrictions on which roads I drive on? If I buy flour, should I be able to use it in recipes only with ingredients bought from the same company?

Apple should by no means ever restrict the ability to place code on a device that they sell. Restrict things from the App Store? Sure. Restrict devices to only use the App Store? Absolutely not.

I'm a user, I install my own apps. They're called "web apps", and if you'll recall, that was Apple's first plan.

Developers hated it, of course, so now we have the App Store. But it's not like Apple has all of a sudden stopped people from bookmarking a website and using it like a built-in app.

And they rightly should hate such plan, since it makes their apps second class. The competition even lets you replace the launcher.

Doesn't that imply that with Firefox OS, every app is second class?

And if it doesn't, then why is the app "second class" when run on an iOS device? Phones running Firefox OS do have native apps running (e.g. the browser). Is Firefox OS doing the wrong thing by preventing users from installing native apps?

If it's A-okay when Mozilla does it, the same should be true when Apple does it.

Try developing for game consoles some day.

It's hilarious the number of people getting up from their Xbox or Playstation to rip on Apple for being a closed garden, and why, oh why, would anyone, anywhere be so stupid to develop for, or buy into, a walled garden.

The cognitive dissonance is intense, which explains, I think the barely contained rage seeping out of each comment.

It's not cognitive dissonance, it's the fact that most people see their phones as closer to general purpose computers than they do their video game consoles.

And that's not crazy. The variety of things you do with your phone is far wider than the variety of things you do on your console. With a console you pretty much just want to play games and maybe use it as a video streaming machine so you don't have to get another device for such a simple function. Compare that to your phone, whose usefulness as a device for making calls has been marginalized, and usefulness for just about everything else has exploded.

One of the good illustrations how app stores (itunes, play) limits us: try to find any usable porno app. In contrast with Web where you can find anything you want and nobody cares what are you doing here, in stores we are hardly limitated to "morally acceptable" apps. It looks like digital Pakistan.

Does your local grocery store sell porn? Just saying, it's a company's store, if they want to have some sense of morale (and tbf, quality), it's their right to deny porn apps.

What about if two main ISP in the world will ban porn? All things which designed to be centralized will be totalitarized. Denying "immoral" apps, denying "too simple" apps, denying apps which prevents to profit - it's obvious consequence of centralization. Yes, we can hype isolated cases like Hueman and even reach to bring it back to the store, but it changes nothing, like ask dictators to pardon some prisioners.

Actually, yes, grocery stores in Germany may sell porn (if they sell magazines). From more classy stuff like Playboy and FHM to just downright cheap and simple porn magazines. Slightly hidden away so you only see the titles, of course. (And England has the famous "page three girls" in their newspapers.)

Of course it's Apple's legal right to deny what they want. That doesn't mean that I think it's right that they have that right. Apple is a quasi-monopoly, and people are dependent on them. There is no second app store for iOS devices really. A more fitting analogy would be when the postal service would decline to transport mail with porn in it. Would that be a good situation?

I'm sure if they would take away the porn magazines (even if the grocery stores just use their legal right to stock only whatever products they want), many people would scream bloody murder. But in the digital world, we are so used to clean walled gardens, that nobody cares. It's a bit like the movie Demolition Man...

> Does your local grocery store sell porn?

Yes? Pornographic magazines are very common in magazine racks...

I was a fan of Apple products (in the late PowerPC days), but eventually gave up on them after countless of small roadblocks caused by their business practices. I told myself I'd never vote for them with my wallet again.

On of the issues I remember at the time was their refusal to have Sun releasing JVM updates for Apple's platform, while simultaneously not keeping it up to date themselves. As a CS student with a curriculum using Java as a teaching platform, that's pretty annoying.

And I have no idea why people still flock to Google and their Android clusterfuck. So there. Different strokes.

The reason is known as "taste". Other day I was in AT&T store to try out new Android phones thinking it must have gotten better now that its 2014. Store didn't had Nexus so I didn't got chance to see it but, boy, latest LG and Samsung models totally sucked. The UX, the experience was outrageously horrible. The icon colors were repulsive. Animations so overdone that it hurt my eyes. If pricing of this crap wasn't so low and saving grace like Google Now and Maps didn't exist, I can't imagine anyone would really want to buy this horrible piece of shit compared to iPhones. The iOS7 has degraded significantly but it's still miles ahead of crap that is known as Android. Overall, it is this taste that outweights Apple's idiosyncrasies around walled garden for some people - your weights may vary.

HTC. Sony. Moto. Just ignore Korean trash completely.

Nexus 5 is LG and is hands down the most gorgeous phone I've ever had.

Yeah, sure: that's a Google phone made on contract. If you take a look at LG's other (= own) phone designs you will see that they have absolutely no design sense whatsoever in either hardware nor software. Especially the interface on their phones is a hideous and unusable pile of shit.

At least Samsung seems to be making some progress in this department, but I'm not holding my hopes up.

I bought the Motorola flagship phone[1] of last year and it's just as bad as he's describing, if not worse.

Unfortunately, it goes way beyond just small UI and physical design issues:

-The "Play Store" is filled with low-brow, tacky crap (above and beyond that of Apple's "App Store").

-Even though my phone has multiple cores, the audio output is seemingly competing for resources with events like changes in network or wifi availability (e.g. riding the subway), which leads to issues like choppy/distorted audio.

-The workflow/UX for common applications and uses was seemingly designed by someone that didn't use the phone for any extended period of time. Want to call someone? Open the 'Phone' application. Don't know the number? Oh, that's a different application -- close 'Phone' and open the 'People' application. What, you'd expect scrolling through contacts to be a common ask for someone about to make a call?

-Bloatware. Remember the days in which you'd buy a Dell and it would come pre-installed with a bunch of crappy applications that you immediately tried to remove? Yeah, it's like that, with the exception that you can't remove the bloatware and you have no control over their use on your data or battery.

-Little weird issues: type a text, hit enter, and start typing again too quickly? Sometimes the final word of your previous line will be entered as input on your current message. Interest-based ads from 3rd parties, hooray (I don't even want to start thinking about which local data sources are scanned)! Volume control is context specific -- there's 4 sliders for the simple intent of "I don't want things louder than X."

-I miss having a physical button to hook into the OS -- when an app is crashing (which is common), you don't have a "oh crap, close-it" toggle. This makes you interact with touchscreen buttons on an interface that's already decided to stop dealing with users.

1. http://www.motorola.com/us/shop-all-mobile-phones-1/Droid-Ra...

> Little weird issues: type a text, hit enter, and start typing again too quickly? Sometimes the final word of your previous line will be entered as input on your current message

This has been occuring since my Galaxy S2 was released, so it's not even a new problem. Presumably, Android developers don't use their own phones enough to have fixed it yet... :/

Yeah, I also get the impression that Android devs aren't eating their own dog food. I'm actually surprised at how inferior it is to iOS in almost every way.

If you go into something hating it, you're destined to not enjoy it. At any rate, I wouldn't have recommended you buy that phone last year. Stock Android, IMO, is always best. Anyhow. My considerations on your points:

> The "Play Store" is filled with low-brow, tacky crap (above and beyond that of Apple's "App Store").

Low barrier to entry means you get a bit of everything. There are quality apps in there, too.

- Never experienced this. This seems to be a motorola complaint, not an Android complaint.

- No idea what this is about. My phone application has a list of contacts built into it.

- My Nexus 5 (nor my Nexus 4, nor my Nexus S) has had bloatware. Again, a motorola complaint...

- Never experienced these issues. Particularly media--there has always been three volumes for me: Alarms, ringtones/notifications and media (games, music, video).

- The softbuttons on the front of the device work just as well as a physical, tactile button. Just because a button is physical does NOT mean that it gets any special treatment by the OS. In android, if you hit the "Home" softbutton, you go home immediately. The softbuttons work on a plane off of that crashing apps run on ;-)

Okay I have a fairly old Galaxy Nexus and can only say that I experience it completely different. The stock Android UI is simple, nothing fancy or unexpected going on. iOS 7 is exactly like what you describe Android. Horrible icons, icons and overdone animations(0.5s zoom out from app to homescreen, really?).

What's also particularly frustrating is that you have to wait 5-10 days after each one of these rejections (and there could be multiple before you finally get a revision live). So we're finding that for minor feature additions that on other platforms we build, ship, and tweak all within a 24 hour period, on iOS that iteration cycle is extended from hours to weeks (if the feature is even approved, which sometimes it is not). This consistently makes for a poorer experience on iOS than on any other platform.

Apple should just make everyone's lives a lot easier (including their own) if they took the innocent until proven guilty approach that Google takes, rather than the guilty until proven innocent stance they currently abide by.

In my experience: web programmers who are afraid of the inner workings of their own computers (or, of course, iOS programmers and hardcore Mac programmers.)

Virtually every web programmer I know uses a MacBook Pro with OS X, but I only know a total of maybe 2 or 3 non-web programmers that do (not counting the 2 or 3 that shoved a Free/OSS unix onto one.) None of them have an OS X MBP as their sole laptop.

As a flexible computer-user, I'm frequently called upon to figure out what's wrong with coworkers' Macs. I've never owned a Mac, yet I'm their best hope. That says it all, I think.

Tech people care more about hardware and software than about social behaviors.

So how's the Android version doing? Please tell me there is one. Because complaining about the walled garden and then ignoring the larger and more open platform, that's rather silly.

and if it's just webviews it's not like it would be hard to port... it's probably written in something like appcelerator anyway.

... ok back to my walled garden

Larger? It's not that easy. There is more Android smartphones sold than Apple phones yep, but 1. thanks to telcos a lot of Android users don't even know what is Android/Google Play (= they'll never download apps) and 2. global app store revenues are still higher on iOS versus Google Play.

The downloads stat is no longer true[1]. Revenue is still much higher on iOS, but the trends have been clear, and cannot be ignored. Before, it was "Android is open, but there are way more iPhones", then it was "Android has more phones but iPhones get more downloads", it won't be long until revenue surpases it too.

[1] http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/07/31/google-play-passes-app...

EDIT: More stats on revenue:

In nov 2012 the gap was 4x

http://www.startable.com/2012/11/

As of Q3 2013 the gap was 2x

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-11-03-google-play...

They're catching up, and fast.

Plus that ignores ad revenue, more Android apps are ad supported

But this was a free app, wasn't it? That would make the revenue aspect fairly irrelevant.

It's a common enough rejection; I've gotten it before and know other people who have too. You can respond to them and clarify why this set of functionality is right, that it's a new app and will have features added in the future, etc. Worked for me, anyway.

This.

There is a rejection appeal process. Use it.

Of all big companies, Apple should be amenable to a straightforward explanation that sometimes simplicity is the right design, and that "adding features for the sake of adding features" is wrong.

We've had an application rejected for this reason as well. In our case, they didn't even describe what they didn't like besides "not enough functionality". Our application was quite a bit more complex, and we could prove there was demand for such an application. I get the feeling they guessed at the application's functionality based on the name and didn't really check it out (it wasn't a particularly great name).

We went through the appeals process. It was very unhelpful. I got the impression that until we responded "we have updated the application", any objections were routed to the same unreasonable person that rejected us originally who didn't care to look at the same application twice.

We ended up adding a "feature" in a completely superficial way. We took an existing feature of the application and we exposed it as a top-level menu item instead of making it appear in the context where it makes sense.

As soon as we told Apple that we'd added a feature and they could verify that there was a new top-level menu item on the first screen of the application, they approved it. It was essentially the same application that they thought didn't have enough functionality, except rearranged slightly to make the functionality obvious to a reviewer that doesn't look past the first screen.

As far as I can tell, there's a lot of pressure inside Apple to churn through reviews as quickly as possible, and the review process is getting sloppier. Things get approved when they have glaring faults, and things get rejected because they didn't make a good impression in the first few seconds a reviewer looked at it.

It sounds like a Soviet-era bureau of censorship struggling to review 100,000 apps, instead of 100 TV shows and newspapers.

The first time South Park was submitted to the ratings board 5 times, it got an NC-17 (to wit: patently adult material, a rating assured to destroy revenue). Then, with nothing more than a name change (the arguably far more vulgar South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut) the rating was changed to a much more market-pleasing R. Sometimes getting approval just takes a well-placed phone call amounting to "c'mon, people, don't be stupid about this."

Care to share your story?

Yes. I had an app rejected for the same reason. Just appeal, and explain your position.

In my case, I made a viewer for Microsoft Access databases. Apple kept complaining that there was no way to create databases on the phone. After a few back and forths someone realised that a viewer doesn't need to create files, and the app was accepted.

When my son was 2, I found a free iPad app called "My Colours". It was a grid of 12 colors. When a color block was touched, a synthesized female voice read out the name of the color.

For my son, at least, it worked very well, much better than fancier (and often garish) apps, and he was even able to identify "turquoise" because of the app. When I had to reinstall my iPad, I found it was missing from the App Store. Fortunately, I found a backup copy.

I strongly suspect that the colors app was pulled for having been "too simple". If that was the case, it would seem that Apple seems to prefer bells and whistles to functionality.

I haven't heard of a case where it was removed later by apple for an issue like that. Perhaps the author pulled it down. If you aren't doing much in the app store, and just make a simple app for fun one year then it is easy to just let your $100/yr membership lapse.

Looks like you need to add a duck. Just keep adding features till they accept it. Example: simple form that lets you take a picture of yourself, type a note about your mood, and share it on Twitter or Facebook, as well as link to the graph.

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/122148

I don't think that's the approach Apple is trying to foster. You will turn a simple app into a shitty app.

Trying to foster? No. Fostering? Yes. What Apple intends to achieve with their policies is an interesting but academic discussion. Policies, laws, and features can have all have plenty of bizarre side effects.

For instance, I'll bet ya that allowing people to share their moods on Facebook leads to measurably different and likely less accurate mood graphs.

One of my favourite apps has a prominent duck[1]. The BubbleFishyMon plugin for gkrellm has a 'fishtank', where the various happenings have meaning - the fish represent network traffic, the bubbles are cpu load, the water level is RAM usage, and the duck... is a duck!

You know you're close to swapping when the duck is upside-down...

[1] http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/-lOiPGHXH3k/hqdefault.jpg (a little overlarge)

This seems like one of those moments when Tim Bray's 2002 sharecropper post applies:

"What it comes down to is this: if you want to develop software, you can build for the Web and/or Unix and/or OSS platforms; or alternatively, you can be a sharecropper."

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePl...

I'm going to go in the opposite direction of everybody here and tell you your app sucks (based on what you say about it) and Apple was right. Look at it this way - A developer creates an app that ask a daily question (maybe with a reminder) and then plots the answers on a graph. That developer then release 1,000 versions of that app to the app store by simply changing the question. That app should have been a general purpose app that lets you define your own questions/frequency/etc. All you've got right now is a question, that when asked daily creates some interesting data. You need to built an app around that. You have some actual features outlined in your roadmap, why not implement at least some of those and resubmit? Oh, and I went looking for feature listings, videos, philosophy, etc, or anything about your app on your website and I got nothing. The entire website about your app is a landing page and one page that is complaining about your rejection. If your app is currently so simple that it didn't even need a single webpage maybe Apple was right....

Not every app needs to change the world.

I agree Matt. Apple has every right to reject apps that don't add any value to their ecosystem. There are probably many apps that do what this app does. The ego of the people making this is incredible, why don't you just use the existing apps if you aren't going to add value?

Which underscores the essential understanding that unlike Android, Windows, OSX, Linux, the web and others, iOS is not a platform at all in a strict sense of the word. It is a proprietary technology partnership with Apple with the one and only goal of making money for Apple. If your interests aren't first and foremost to make money for Apple, then secondly to make it for yourself, go somewhere else.

Unrelated to the article itself, but a friendly tip for the Hueman guys: the lack of margins on this page made it very hard to read. Not everyone browses full-screen on their 27" iMac. On any window under 1100px, the content runs into the margin on the left, which could easily be avoided with some padding: http://cl.ly/image/2V0A021M1t0S

I had to scroll back down every time I moved forward a page.

I honestly don't what is the big deal. It sounds like this is not a full blown rejection, it is more like a "Oh, nice idea! We could use that. Why don't you revise it a bit and resubmit": > We encourage you to review your app concept and evaluate whether you can incorporate additional content and features to provide a more robust user experience.

And it also sounds like you were already aware of what is missing: > The next couple planned releases on our roadmap will heavily rely on native iOS functions and code to include things like tagging, additional graph views and scrubbing, ability to add media.

It think it will be a great app. I hope you get over the "rejection" notice and keep working on it. All the best for your resubmission.

Why appeal to us? Appeal to Apple, through this channel: https://developer.apple.com/appstore/contact/?topic=appeal

Apple should rename their appeals process to cutsey human words like they do "logic board","retina" etc.

The Apple Peal process.

"If it's just using webviews, why does this need to be an app?"

exactly...

there is no actual reason this couldn't be a cross platform 'web app'. it would be better that way. why do you want the app on the appstore exactly?

the list of reasons given are of debateable merit the last one is probably the best, and suggests a fix. develop the app a bit further so you can justify it not being a web page...

also, why are you storing data on the user's phone? will you be using icloud or some web service to preserve it across devices? is it just cache?

I found the reasons not to be a web page very bad. There are perfect good web API's to store data on the device: http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html

I would suggest to add a function so you can add a personal note to each day, and sell it as a mood tracker / diary. First, it would be useful to keep track of why you were feeling bad or good on a given day by maybe a making a small not on what happen. Plus, then apple would not be able to reject it, as it would be a diary app with a graph. There are a ton of diary apps on iOS, and this one would even have a graph. Let them argue that's not novel and feature reach :)

They may reject it because there are a number of mood tracking diaries already.

So far few people have addressed Apple's argument. Does this app provide valuable utility? Does it enable people to do something they couldn't do before or in a way they couldn't do it before?

There are already many mood trackers, just search the app store. This is certainly not anything new. The one thing that makes this one different from the others is that it seems to have no extra features. But that can't be their design vision, because they plan to add a social aspect and more views and editing functions. So what's special about this app in the way it stands right now?

You even state that

It sounds like you think it needs more features too. I understand wanting to release as soon as possible but this might be a good chance to add the other features YOU want.

Given the app consists of two web views and a bit of background code I'm not surprised. Perhaps if they'd utilised the GUI elements Apple provides to give a native experience it would actually warrant being an app.

tbh this seems like it would be better implemented as a HTML5 mobile site that utilises the new local storage APIs. You can still promote web apps through App Store, and it seems like a more obvious route to me.

> You can still promote web apps through App Store

Really? I haven't heard about this.

Sorry, my bad. It seems I was thinking of PhoneGap, which packages HTML5 apps for mobile devices https://build.phonegap.com/

I believe on some Android platform (such as Amazon App Store) you can even charge for HTML5 apps, so it's not unprecedented.

However Apple app submissions requirements state you have to have sufficient functionality to warrant providing a native application. Not surprised that this code didn't make the grade, but as mentioned if they were able to make use of UI framework or put through PhoneGap could resolve the issue.

Should have gone with Android.

I really want this app, and now they are having to spend time getting it accepted by apple, it's just going to delay an Android version.

Don't be ridiculous. There are multiple android apps that do this already, and the developers obviously don't care about Android that much otherwise they'd have gone with android first.

It's just two webviews anyway, so it should be no real effort for them to port it.

The whole concept needs work. You compare each day to the previous one, but the app doesn't know by how much. Which leads to ludicrous results when applied to real life situations. For example you got fired, or your girlfriend left you, or your friend/relative died. What a terrible day! But then over the course of several days you slowly get over it, so your mood rises up until you reach the original level. But what does the graph show? That you're feeling much better after the traumatic event! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, eh? The model is just plain wrong.

In all fairness, I'm confused about what the app does. What do the colors represent? What is the y axis? etc.. Could insert a legend and some labels to make it more clear. But I could be wrong and the screenshots don't accurately depict the app. Also the Hueman ID is a bit clinical/sterile and I would say doesn't represent a good user experience, because it doesn't provide me with anything useful only a question mark. But again, this is from just seeing the screenshots. Look forward to downloading the app! Neat idea!

I am guessing the ID's here are just for testing or maybe changed to numbers as a matter of privacy?

A walled garden can be used to guard against bugs, viruses, spam. But when its used to curate according to somebody's idea of taste or usefulness, that's arrogance. Let the market decide.

Absolute power corrupts.

I wonder - when an app rejection with a good idea happens based on it being "too simple" (and many great ideas are simple to implement), what if competition picks up the idea, adds more bloat, gets approved and steals the original's thunder, shouldn't Apple be held responsible and pay for damages?

There's probably no chance of that happening, because it's their app store, they can do whatever they want and so on. But this kind of deal is exactly why some companies feel like protecting their "intellectual property" with patents. Because the distribution networks are not open, except for the web and even if your execution is perfect, there's no guarantee you'll be the first to market, because shit like this happens. And then we've got people praising app stores, because their grandma can now feel safe, though to me optimizing for grandmas doesn't make much sense.

I view the app store model as a regression. It is useful, but only when it's optional. Android is still allowing installs from third-party sources, even though you have to click a checkbox to enable the capability, but due to current trends and seeing Android's evolution, I don't have many hopes for this feature surviving in the long run. In the end, the web is still the most open distribution platform and these big companies are trying to fix that.

Do you have an example of an app with an original idea being rejected for being too simple? That sounds like an interesting hypothetical scenario.

Yeah, well, reject Apple yourself and put it into the Play Store.

I use a Macbook Air and multiple idevices. I don't develop mobile (yet). I'm sorry, but I find all these 'daddy Apple rejected my app' posts a bit tiring.

It doesn't sound like you've tried appealing the ruling. This sounds like the sort of thing that would get through on appeal once you've explained why it can't have more features.

"we consider simplicity to be uncomplicated - not limited in features and functionality"

I cannot believe this is an official position for a company like Apple (or any company for that matter).

My advice would be to move away from native and towards the web, as opposed to baking in useless features or planning new features that rely on native capabilities.

I worked for a mobile apps platform that cobbled together webkitviews and formed it into a mobile app. Quite often it was rejected because it's really just various RSS feeds.

Apple didn't reject you because they thought it was simple. They rejected you because you built it too simply.

At least toss in some Origami flips and folds.

It's really your typical regulatory committee keeping up appearance and hitting their quota:

Regardless of quality or compliance with the rules, Apple's App Store review staff needs to reject a given number of admission a week. Otherwise, they're out of a job.

Think about end-of-the-day traffic tickets or city's planning and zoning... Here's a classic explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdi885ZdBA Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Food_and_Drug...

Fuck Apple. I mean really.

I've been there, had an app I used daily in my job. I valued it for how fast it got me the information I needed (aviation weather) without features that I didn't need getting in the way. A few friends thought it looked useful so I put it on the store and got the same rejection. I added a couple of features that nobody uses (saving weather for later viewing) and got it through. I always suspected it was that I wanted to charge Tier 3 for it and they didn't think that was justified.

This sounds similar but different to something I did. I needed a basic calculator for work, and colleagues did too. A dead simple app, but it was free and was accepted.

That's a shame. Mood trackers are a useful tool to help tackle some mental health problems. Tacking on a bunch of stuff to get it into the app store feels sub-optimal. My current mood tracker has some features that I really don't like. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/moodometer/id404137652?mt=8

When did "do one thing and do it well" become something to avoid?

Assuming you haven't already, just respond to them with a well-reasoned argument why they should let it through as-is. It occasionally works.

I've done it before when they tried to reject my company's app because we were using a webview in one section and they felt it should be native. We were doing a bunch of other stuff behind the scenes though and I told them it would be cost-prohibitive to redo that whole section right then. They let it through.

Not everything can be as deep as Flappy Bird.

Or the million Flappy Bird clones that Apple quickly approved.

By Apple's logic the app Everyday should not have been accepted: http://everyday-app.com/

Apple likes you to integrate platform features though, that is heavily tied to the camera.

I realise many are in the mood to dump all over apple but... really, if apple or anyone treats their app store as a store-front, it's not hard to understand how the store manager might find this application to be just adding noise.

if you think all apps should be allowed no matter what, then you are right to be bothered by their rejection of this app. if you think any store manager has some reason to filter apps, then you cant really complain.

I wonder if it was partially rejected due to the use of 'webviews'.

Absolutely not... I can vouch for it. Did you seriously think that would happen?

That's not a thing

Silly but this could be part of it. Apple directs people that just make an app that is a phonegap wrapper of a website to just make a website. I have seen apps be rejected for just being website wrappers or webview apps without other integration points. The fact that it doesn't tie in any services is also sometimes a factor. Integration of iCloud, GameCenter, etc always make for an easier review time.

I've submitted at least 10 apps to the app store that were just a webview wrapper, no problems. Anecdotal but, there you go.

I recently had an app rejected under 2.12 for using webviews. It was dependent on a service that needed OAuth, and I had used a webview just to authenticate. The reviewers rejected it even before attempting to authenticate, and specifically called out the use of webviews.

I had an app released one month ago, a simple wrapper around webview, and 1 page only. Went through well.

I haven't tested the app (I'd actually like to), so I don't know how far they went with the web view approach. I could imagine that the graph feels pretty static, and taking a native approach and spent some more effort on a playful experience could already solve the rejection. No need for made up features.

Keep it simple! That seems the magic of the app.

Your mistake was making an iOS app. Experiments must be done on a platform that allows users to install apps themselves, like Android.

This is why Apple is inferior to Android. You spend resources to develop something, and it's a crapshoot whether or not it gets accepted or stays accepted.

I can understand ordinary customers being wow'ed by Apple marketing, but why don't developers jump ship en masse at the way Apple treats them? It's not like there isn't an alternative.

Add a flashlight or fart button to it. "Needs more flashlight" should be the "needs more cowbell" of our age.

Ironic: to satisfy Apple, the mecca for good design, you have to crap up your application.

Simple has two meanings. You are addressing one of them. I'd argue that the fact the app consist essentially 2 web views, the simple means 'WTF is this even an app?'.

And that is improved by adding unrelated dingles to the app?

Way to miss the point...

The simplicity is the function on the, rather the app itself. To be clear, its not what it does (or doesn't) do, it's how it does it.

I like the idea of this. Not only is the historic data interesting, I suspect just taking time to reflect on your days would likely improve happiness in an of itself (e.g. if you know anyone who is doing one of those 100 happy days challenge).

However, the arguments against the web are a bit flimsy IMO. Data on the web is ephemeral only if you put it in an ephemeral store. Put it in localStorage! It's highly unlikely you'd exceed some quota (usually 10mb) with the kind of data you're storing, plus user's are offered chance to expand quota usually.

Or if you want something that goes above and beyond that (or what you have with a "native app") you could integrate with Dropbox's datastore API [0] and have data available on any machines I choose to use.

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore/docs/js

So they had a submission screen and a probably blank graph. It's pretty easy to go back and add a tutorial with colorful graphics and an example graph, a few help pages describing the idea and concept, etc.. Honestly they should have just added some more filler pages rather than writing this blog entry, both are about as tough.

Just wondering if you appealed and what was the response ?

Considering how much crapware is on the Appstore, it's hard to believe Apple even reviews stuff anymore. You see rejections like this, and you wonder why those same rules weren't applied to basically everything that comes up in a search.

This seems to be a great idea. I really like everything about it, I would love to use it (even though I don't own smartphone). Too bad Apple did reject it. One sentence that made me quite happy in this article is:

"Hueman is free and anonymous, and to create that seamless experience, it needs to store data on your phone. If it was a web page on mobile safari, that data is more ephemeral."

If the Hueman developers read this: have you considered something like unhosted [0] for your application? It should be easy enough to implement.

[0] https://unhosted.org/

A similar app was recently in the top chart in "productivity" section.

It's called feeltracker, and it has historical graphs: https://www.feeltracker.com

At least they could plot their feelings of rejection on the app Apple rejected.

The times when I'm unhappy, I often have no idea of the cause.

Why not add some optional questions that would drive more useful reporting if answered:

# Are you in a relationship? For how long?

# Do you have a job? Rate your performance 1-10

# Are you exercising? How often?

# Are you happy with your weight? What is your weight?

# Rate the healthiness of your diet.

# How well are you sleeping? How many hours?

There are so many more useful data points you could collect. If they're optional, and maybe hidden unless you enable them, it won't do much to over-complicate the app.

It would then be super useful for those who suffer from depression or other psychiatric illnesses, and problem solved re app store.

Does it cost anything to submit an app (apart from the initial dev account)? Otherwise you could just submit it again, and hope that it gets a different reviewer. Reviews seem to be a bit arbitrary sometimes.

Apple is curating a ten billion dollar marketplace [1].

Apple will error on the side of maintaining the overall quality of the entire Application selection, even if it means many very worthwhile applications are rejected.

I sympathize with huemanapp's developers, but they must realize they are competing for "virtual shelf space." I say to them; keep plugging away and good luck.

[1] https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/01/07App-Store-Sales-T...

Yes. I can see what you mean.

I can absolutely see why Apple would reject an app like this, with such quality apps that are -not- “too simple”. For example: http://imgur.com/8N9GS6g

That link is broken.

Edited.

So with this example, are you arguing that Apple should be more selective, or let any and all comers into App store?

I'm not arguing either of those things.

I'm remarking that it's hard to me to take seriously a claim that Apple has these mystical standards that must be met and that they're just trying to "cultivate a quality ecosystem".

Seriously, download some of those apps. At least two have -very low- quality images (they look like obviously massively resized, highly pixellated images) that get a weird red glow that's more akin to image corruption than a 'highlight' when you touch the screen to generate a highly unrealistic fart noise (in the singular - just one simple noise, not even a range).

He/she is pointing out the hypocrisy.

A shelf space analogy doesn't make sense. With a real shelf, there is scarcity. Only so many shelves can fit in the store, and only so many products on a shelf.

The marginal cost of a virtual good is zero. Apple's ability to support apps is effectively infinite.

There are over 1M apps in the App Store.

This is not about "shelf space".

There is a kind of scarcity in abundance.

When the marginal cost of shelf space approaches zero, another factor comes into play: time spent by the buyers.

With too many shelves in the store, many products will never be bought, no matter how good they are.

There are already 1M apps in the App Store.

There's already too many apps, so preventing "over choice" isn't their goal.

You might want to become familiar with Overchoice. [1][2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...

The ironic thing is that Apple is asking you to do something very Un-Apple. I imagine if you loaded the app up with "Share this with your friends!" kind of junk, they'd accept it.

So... could this by any chance mean an Android port? Pretty please? :)

Given how it's (self-admitted) just two webviews and push notifications, a port should take just a week (if that) to build.

A bit off-topic but is there a name for the tone of the copy on this? It reads like the current tranche of MS/Apple advertising speak. Would cult-like be going too far?

"Apple sucks" and "use Android" aren't really productive responses to an article like this. Consider taking your quips to a site like Reddit.

I disagree, you don't need to say anything derogatory about Apple but saying that it is a blessing in disguise that Apple didn't let you into their walled garden when you have a much larger and open playground in Android is a very productive response.

If you want to sell your apps that large Android playground suddenly shrinks. A lot.

Or at least, we don't need 10 comments saying the exact same thing.

An app like Flappy Birds will pass, but this won't? sigh

Reason makes me feel like they don't want you competing with an area they're going to go into.

I appreciate people sharing their stories about Apple's rejection motivations. This helps other developers to avoid doing the same "mistakes". But, isn't it against the TOS we agree on when joining the Apple Dev Program, to talk about rejection reasons and even cite the feedback mails? I was under this impression, can't say that I would be sad if I'm wrong.

Maybe not related, but is it possible that Apple does not want this app to exist because parts of it could be considered prior art for it's patent application?: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/126980-apple-seeks-to-scan-y...

Pretty recently filed on Jan 23rd, not saying this has anything to do with the OP's rejection, but it could be planned future technology.

This deserves to be higher up in this thread. My first thought exactly.

That's odd, I reject Apple for the same reason.

I joke of course, but Apple builds monopolies they have tight control over, sue for anything and basically tell everyone who doesn't like it to screw off (and they can because they have the monopoly). As much as I like their design and hardware, as far as corporate entities go, they're kind of a jerk.

Monopolies? Like there are no Google Play store and Windows Phone store (whatever it is called), nobody else makes smartphones, nobody else sells books and music online?

The article was interesting, but it's more interesting seeing that Apple is Hacker News favourite whipping boy now.

When I was younger and struggling with issues, I did exactly this - plot my happiness on a graph. It was one of the few things that helped me get through a day, seeing that there are ebbs and flows, and for every low point there's likely a high point coming up.

This app needs to be published.

Best thing that could have happened to you, given all the attention you're getting now? :-)

I've published apps that were simpler than "Hello World" for iOS, if this is any indication:

http://www.appcoda.com/hello-world-app-using-xcode-5-xib/

Make it live on the web. Better yet, make it live on a device. Two buttons, button presses are valid only once a day, LED confirmation, USB read-out. Make the case beautiful, done. Standard AAA Battery will live for years, data can be written to flash.

I put down a sketch pad and collection view for memo taking app. It didn't get rejected.

> We encourage you to review your app concept and evaluate whether you can incorporate additional content and features to provide a more robust user experience.

Easy - just add the ability to issue fart sounds, which has always been enough quality for Apple users.

My DogeCoin price app was too simple too.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1wmmk9/my_dogecoin...

Seems like the cheapest way to get noticed in the App Store is for your app to get rejected.

I had an idea like this once: http://lifemetric.com/

I always wanted to make an app for it, but it looks like yours is pretty nice. Just add some more features and Apple will probably accept it.

Skimmed the article and the comments, thought the app seemed like a cool idea. It was when the App Store couldn't find any results for 'Hueman' that it struck me; the whole point of the article! Ha. Damn it.

This pleadings with Apple make me wanna throw up. I can't make myself even read how great you are and it is not fair. The only thing not fair is you submitting it to Apple.

50 hues of gray is what this is.

Just release it on android

There's actually a UK citizen science project running along very similar lines: http://www.mappiness.org.uk/

It also reminds me of that episode of King of the Hill where Hank and his family join another church and they keep getting calls asking how satisfied they are on a scale of 1-10 XD

How is a once a day mood tracker app not useful? Look at the apps currently in the App Store... how is this any less useful than a flashlight or any other single function application?

Fuck Apple.

Been there, had that response. I got the same rejection last year and basically stopped fine tuning my app as I refused to add stuff that it didn't need.

I am absolutely fascinated with this tool. I only with I had the ability to write something like it myself. I'm really satisfied others have the same thoughts.

Thank you!

Anyways it is not wise to pour frustration on rejection publicly. Especially in this case, as there seems to have been no conversation or further appeal.

You should get it working on Android -- but only so I can use it. In all seriousness, it looks like a great app, I'd keep appealing it.

Don't know whether I should spoil the secret or keep it to myself, but why don't you submit again? and again. until it gets in.

This just in - grass has rejected itself for being too green. This is the core feature of Apple products - their simplicity.

simplicity to use, not design.

If it's designed simple, it will be simple to use. So it's the same thing.

Just put it on Android. It looks great though!

Send it to the bloggers that be as "The app Apple doesn't want you to see" and use it to your advantage.

Forget Apple, make an Android app.

Add something that uses the new M7 motion tracking chip and they'll approve it. :)

Waiting for the Android version.

this app is perfect the way it is. i'm disappointed that the pioneers of design in software are requiring you to make things less simple for some arbitrary reason.

"make things as simple as possible, but no simpler" --Einstein

This is great. I hope it eventually makes the app store. I would 100% use this.

I really like the idea behind the app but we also need to follow quality criteria set by Apple team to stop non productive app being listed in appstore.

As suggested by Crazygringo, they can improve the app by including some functionality. I am eagerly waiting for this app to get approved !

Is there some technical limitation to making this a web app?

Apple keeps chipping away at that good will.

you can port it over to android then

Tap to flap.

iWatch territory.

I fought the same fucking battle. Just keep appealing and cross your fingers you find a reviewer who isn't a dipshit.

I want to upvote you. Please share your story.

    >"cross your fingers you find a reviewer who isn't a dipshit"

Now there's the kind of sentiment you can feel comfortable building a business on!

Its called android

I'm not surprised since this is pretty similar to what all communication hubs are trying to do (for obvious marketing reasons). You are serious competition and they have the power to sweep you under a rug.

My heavens. This is in danger of turning all the rhetoric around depression on its ear! Everyone knows happiness or the lack of it is determined by brain chemistry, not life events. A well-adjusted person feels the same whether you run them over with a car or give them a hand job.

Let me be the first to reject this website for being "too shitty".

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