I don't know that this discussion has anywhere left to go, but I thought I quoted the relevant part in the HIG already. The desktop is a metaphor. HIG says don'

I don't know that this discussion has anywhere left to go, but I thought I quoted the relevant part in the HIG already. The desktop is a metaphor. HIG says don't redefine iPhone OS metaphors. The picture frame app invokes the desktop metaphor. The iPhone OS already has a desktop metaphor, in the form of Springboard. Therefore, picture frame app is redefining an iPhone OS metaphor, and the app gets rejected. This is a reasonable application of the rules. You could certainly quibble with it. But reasonable does not imply optimal, or that the rules couldn't stand revision. Also, this is the sort of issue we can obstinately disagree over without consulting data, but I really doubt that even non-tech savvy users are going to identify a screenshot of this app as a picture frame. I've never seen a picture frame with a bunch of widgets on it, at least until I saw this app. I'd consider it far more likely that non-tech savvy users have seen a computer desktop with widgets on it and a picture for a background.