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That’s a deceptive title. It wasn’t the use of MoltenVK, it was that MoltenVK used non public APIs. It even says in the article: > We were alerted today by an

That’s a deceptive title. It wasn’t the use of MoltenVK, it was that MoltenVK used non public APIs. It even says in the article: > We were alerted today by an indie game studio that one of their iOS games is now rejected by Apple over its MoltenVK usage. Specifically, the game was rejected for "non-public API" usage. Apple's rejection letter cites the use of non-public interfaces around IOSurface, which is used directly by MoltenVK.

ashleyn 8y ago
Seems to me an all-too-convient rationale to force devs to use the proprietary Metal framework directly.
- AlphaSite 8y ago
  No... Sounds like a commonly enforced policy which is being enforced normally. Why would they really care about which gfx api they use?
  - shmerl 8y ago
    > Why would they really care about which gfx api they use? Same reason they refused to provide cross platform Vulkan to begin with. And it's not a good reason obviously.
  - tmd83 8y ago
    I thought apple in general follow this guideline unless you are one the big guys? Is that right or am I remembering this wrong?
- flipgimble 8y ago
  Seems to me you are into promoting conspiracy theories if they confirm your own world view, instead of withholding judgement until more information is available. The article omitted the critical detail about which private API was used. I have received one of those letters before and they should contain those details. The fact that the article omitted that information makes it sound like they want to start a controversy instead of admitting a library developer probably made an easily remedied mistake. They were hoping for low-information-high-opinion internet audience to drive traffic.
kitsunesoba 8y ago
Yes, this isn’t news at all. Apple has always had a hardline policy when it comes to private API usage. Private APIs are private for a reason — they’re undocumented and often not finished or drastically different from their intended final public form and thus likely to change without notice. If developers were allowed to use them, it’d make major iOS updates much more painful for users than they currently are as the APIs apps rely on would get broken with much greater regularity. That, or Apple faces nightmarish levels of compatibility maintenance, slowing development to a crawl. If this game used Metal directly with no involvement of MoltenVK at all, it’d still get rejected if it as long as that IOSurface private API is in use. The title is borderline clickbait.
- izacus 8y ago
  Apples private API scanner also leaves a lot to be desired - I've worked on projects where our clients had their apps rejected due to use of names like "index" (not quite those, but similary generic) for use of "private API". Of course Apple rejected this and refused to communicate.
deleted 8y ago
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ryandrake 8y ago
Yea, I clicked the link, preparing to equip my Leather Armor of Technical Outrage, and after reading the details, this is about as mundane as it gets. Apple doesn't let you release apps that call private APIs. It's been this way since the App Store existed. MoltenVK allegedly calls one of these. The rational next step would be that the game studio or Apple would identify the API in question to the MoltenVK team so they could fix it.

ashleyn 8y ago

Seems to me an all-too-convient rationale to force devs to use the proprietary Metal framework directly.

AlphaSite 8y ago
No... Sounds like a commonly enforced policy which is being enforced normally. Why would they really care about which gfx api they use?
- shmerl 8y ago
  > Why would they really care about which gfx api they use? Same reason they refused to provide cross platform Vulkan to begin with. And it's not a good reason obviously.
- tmd83 8y ago
  I thought apple in general follow this guideline unless you are one the big guys? Is that right or am I remembering this wrong?
flipgimble 8y ago
Seems to me you are into promoting conspiracy theories if they confirm your own world view, instead of withholding judgement until more information is available. The article omitted the critical detail about which private API was used. I have received one of those letters before and they should contain those details. The fact that the article omitted that information makes it sound like they want to start a controversy instead of admitting a library developer probably made an easily remedied mistake. They were hoping for low-information-high-opinion internet audience to drive traffic.

kitsunesoba 8y ago

Yes, this isn’t news at all. Apple has always had a hardline policy when it comes to private API usage. Private APIs are private for a reason — they’re undocumented and often not finished or drastically different from their intended final public form and thus likely to change without notice. If developers were allowed to use them, it’d make major iOS updates much more painful for users than they currently are as the APIs apps rely on would get broken with much greater regularity. That, or Apple faces nightmarish levels of compatibility maintenance, slowing development to a crawl. If this game used Metal directly with no involvement of MoltenVK at all, it’d still get rejected if it as long as that IOSurface private API is in use. The title is borderline clickbait.

izacus 8y ago
Apples private API scanner also leaves a lot to be desired - I've worked on projects where our clients had their apps rejected due to use of names like "index" (not quite those, but similary generic) for use of "private API". Of course Apple rejected this and refused to communicate.

deleted 8y ago

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ryandrake 8y ago

Yea, I clicked the link, preparing to equip my Leather Armor of Technical Outrage, and after reading the details, this is about as mundane as it gets. Apple doesn't let you release apps that call private APIs. It's been this way since the App Store existed. MoltenVK allegedly calls one of these. The rational next step would be that the game studio or Apple would identify the API in question to the MoltenVK team so they could fix it.