6 ms·

Are those documented anywhere?

by w10-1 1mo ago

Jonovono 1mo ago
Somewhat, but still very subjective. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spam https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spa... You can still always get around them (at least my experience), but it just takes a lot of time
- dgellow 1mo ago
  The guideline: (b) Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store. Repeated submissions of this kind may lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.
  - Grombobulous 1mo ago
    This is such a dumb policy, and it's absolutely not even being followed. I submitted a timer app this year and it got approved. It's literally just a slightly more feature-rich timer. I made this as a "my first app" type of experience. Never at any point was the quality of my app questioned, and I'm the first person who will tell you that it's not very good.
    - Jonovono 1mo ago
      Don't worry. The next time you spend lots of time developing an app, Apple will be sure to reject it multiple times ;p
- mortenjorck 1mo ago
  Look up "wireless printing" in the App Store sometime. As best I can tell, one or two actors have spammed the entire category with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of subscription-heavy repackagings of CUPS drivers as iOS apps. They all have very similar blue line-art icons of a printer, similar preview images with similar typography, and are all crammed full of subscription options. They are probably making a killing on people who forgot about or can't figure out how to cancel the $4.99/week subscription on the top 20-30 of these apps. All this while of course the one app you've been working on for a year will be held up with multiple rounds of rejections weeks apart. For all the good Cook has done in his 15 years at Apple, the App Store will be the one real stain on his legacy, and I hope Ternus is as acutely cognizant of that as the developer community is.
  - bigyabai 1mo ago
    > the App Store will be the one real stain on his legacy Well, and the Apple Car. And the Butterfly Keyboard and that horrible i9 16" MBP. Plus the Airpower, and the Vision Pro, and he cancelled the entire Mac Pro lineup too. Also the $1,000 VESA monitor mount and goofy desktop wheels, and we should probably also mention his meetings with Donald Trump and eventual White House dinner with Bin Salman. Tim also failed to legally deter NSO Group, held a grudge against Nvidia during a $4 trillion ARM/CUDA datacenter boom, greenlit Liquid Glass, proposed Client-Side Scanning and fought dirty against organic and reasonable EU regulations. But besides that, yes, the pitiful state of the App Store will be remembered as his true strategic slip-up.
    - mcphage 1mo ago
      > Well, and the Apple Car. How is the Apple Car a stain on his legacy? They worked on something, and decided not to do it. Who cares? Apple’s management of the App Store has ruined mobile apps. Nobody gives a shit about the car.
      - bigyabai 1mo ago
        You're right, at Apple's scale we should forgive Tim Cook for wasting human talent and capital on failed megaprojects. It's not like those resources could have been diverted to address the other problems with Apple's services or hardware products, who cares?

Are those documented anywhere?

by w10-1 1mo ago

Are those documented anywhere?

Somewhat, but still very subjective. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spam https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spa... You can still always get around them (at least my experience), but it just takes a lot of time

dgellow 1mo ago
The guideline: (b) Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store. Repeated submissions of this kind may lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.
- Grombobulous 1mo ago
  This is such a dumb policy, and it's absolutely not even being followed. I submitted a timer app this year and it got approved. It's literally just a slightly more feature-rich timer. I made this as a "my first app" type of experience. Never at any point was the quality of my app questioned, and I'm the first person who will tell you that it's not very good.
  - Jonovono 1mo ago
    Don't worry. The next time you spend lots of time developing an app, Apple will be sure to reject it multiple times ;p
mortenjorck 1mo ago
Look up "wireless printing" in the App Store sometime. As best I can tell, one or two actors have spammed the entire category with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of subscription-heavy repackagings of CUPS drivers as iOS apps. They all have very similar blue line-art icons of a printer, similar preview images with similar typography, and are all crammed full of subscription options. They are probably making a killing on people who forgot about or can't figure out how to cancel the $4.99/week subscription on the top 20-30 of these apps. All this while of course the one app you've been working on for a year will be held up with multiple rounds of rejections weeks apart. For all the good Cook has done in his 15 years at Apple, the App Store will be the one real stain on his legacy, and I hope Ternus is as acutely cognizant of that as the developer community is.
- bigyabai 1mo ago
  > the App Store will be the one real stain on his legacy Well, and the Apple Car. And the Butterfly Keyboard and that horrible i9 16" MBP. Plus the Airpower, and the Vision Pro, and he cancelled the entire Mac Pro lineup too. Also the $1,000 VESA monitor mount and goofy desktop wheels, and we should probably also mention his meetings with Donald Trump and eventual White House dinner with Bin Salman. Tim also failed to legally deter NSO Group, held a grudge against Nvidia during a $4 trillion ARM/CUDA datacenter boom, greenlit Liquid Glass, proposed Client-Side Scanning and fought dirty against organic and reasonable EU regulations. But besides that, yes, the pitiful state of the App Store will be remembered as his true strategic slip-up.
  - mcphage 1mo ago
    > Well, and the Apple Car. How is the Apple Car a stain on his legacy? They worked on something, and decided not to do it. Who cares? Apple’s management of the App Store has ruined mobile apps. Nobody gives a shit about the car.
    - bigyabai 1mo ago
      You're right, at Apple's scale we should forgive Tim Cook for wasting human talent and capital on failed megaprojects. It's not like those resources could have been diverted to address the other problems with Apple's services or hardware products, who cares?