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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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"

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.

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.

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?

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).

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.

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!

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."

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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?

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.

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

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 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

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 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..

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.

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

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

    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

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