14 ms·

My App Is Dead in the Water

369 points by stan503 8y ago

ary 8y ago
One has to wonder if what Apple actually objects to is the display of logos (from the favicons) in the list of links. They’re an incredibly brand conscious company and almost certain have people scouting for things that could get them sued by the owners of other brands.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  It would seem to be odd for a mark owner to sue after specifically putting out a favicon, which is intended to be used to visually ID that site in a sea of tabs/links.
  - ary 8y ago
    While I wholeheartedly agree I mean to focus on the perception of a problem and not the presence of any actual problem. Regardless of where the logo is acquired from what is more important is where it is shown and what it is shown next to. This is what I mean by brand sensitivity. The article makes it seem (to me) like the reviewer has a problem with a specific aspect of the app but is using a somewhat broadly interpretable part of the guidelines as the reason for rejection. This is why I suspect that a visual change regarding the logos might help the app pass review.
mmjaa 8y ago
Surely its enough to get a Hacker News person to give you a claim waiver or something? I mean, did you try contacting the HN folks?
- dewey 8y ago
  The article doesn't mention YC, it mentions Techcrunch, Conde Nast etc.
- stan503 8y ago
  Actually I did ask them, they (unsurprisingly) didn't have anything like that.
  - s17n 8y ago
    Given the huge volume of crappy apps in the store, I think the general public is well served by this policy even if it does suck for well intentioned developers like yourself.
salvar 8y ago
This seems weird enough to be an error of some kind. Not that Apple is likely to fix it, but enforcing this rule would exclude: - All Reddit apps - All HN apps - Twitter - Facebook - Google News - Any link or news aggregator I guess even a browser wouldn't fly, since it "displays full articles from multiple news sources."
- toyg 8y ago
  Unless they are cracking down on apps that do nothing but republish links and feeds. Most Reddit apps will let you post and engage; some HN apps will do that too (shout out to my beloved Minihack). This particular app didn't, so it's difficult to argue that it provided anything more than republishing links... something that surely should be done only by their News app now /s
  - salvar 8y ago
    I guess... but that still leaves pretty much all news aggregators. Google News doesn't let you do much other than read news from all over the internet. It's functionally exactly the same, only with a different aggregating algorithm.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    It's been a while since I developed an iOS app, but I seem to remember there being a rule that you "app" can't just be a wrapper for a web site.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  Even the Hangouts client opens links which people send me in its own internal browser— a behaviour I actually don't care for, since I'd prefer it spawned tabs in the regular Safari app. But it's exactly the same thing this guy is getting in trouble for.
- nambit 8y ago
  ? A lot of reddit and HN apps don't display the articles in app. Some of them open browser pages. I don't see how your "All ... apps" is quantified.
adrianN 8y ago
The hardships of developing for closed platforms. At least your livelihood didn't depend on that App.
wsc981 8y ago
Painful, but I guess it's up to the individual AppStore reviewer to figure out what is ok or not. I actually created a few years ago a HackerNews client as well for iOS, but it never got through the review process, not even version 1.0. I was surprised, since many other HackerNews apps with similar features were allowed. At that point I just gave up and put the source code on Github, for whole the world to see. I believe this way it might still have helped me find new job opportunities, since companies could see a bit of my coding style. So I believe in the end not all work was for nothing.
- gurpreet- 8y ago
  Yes, it would help to know why that condition is there in the first place and also why Apple exercise it for some apps and not others. There's little app developers can do about it for iOS. On Android you can install new app stores, but with Apple you're forced to use theirs. This can be both a blessing and a curse. In this case, it's just unfortunate luck.
- fouc 8y ago
  I'd assume other reviewers were involved once he challenged the results.
jgh 8y ago
Looks like Apple has a history of removing third party reader apps. See a discussion from a couple years ago on Reddit apps getting nuked: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/4edaee/looks_like_the_app_store_is_pulling_all_third/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/4edaee/looks_like_t... edit: looks like that time it was for NSFW content....
- sushibowl 8y ago
  It should be well known by now that Apple developers serve at the pleasure of the king (https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the-king/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the...).
chipgap98 8y ago
There must be thousands and thousands of apps that function similar to HN clients. Providing a wrapper of an existing site and some additionally functionality seems pretty standard. This is another sad example of the power the internet giants have over developers when we're forced to build for their platforms in order to get users.
- kara-1234 8y ago
  Completely agreed here, we gave these companies all the power to keep us safe, integrate into our lives, and at the drop of a hat now they can take it away from you with no real way to fight back.
jey 8y ago
> - Only show a portion of the article within your app and link out to Safari for the rest Reading between the lines here, is the problem that ad tracking works less in these apps due to having separate cookies, so publishers are pressuring Apple to remove these apps?
- toyg 8y ago
  More likely that is about Apple pushing its News app.
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    Aside: Is there a reasonable way to get any non-American/non-English news in the news app? I find it a bit mindblowing that "Discover Channels" and the topics list are all in English and for a country I don't live in. For example, there's an option to add every BBC subcategory except BBC Mundo (i.e. Latin America).
sparrish 8y ago
A lesson learned by a lot of iOS devs. If you want to play in their game, you have to play by their rules, even if they don't apply those rules to everyone else.
dewey 8y ago
Is the app actually parsing the articles and displaying them the app or just like other HN clients that just have links and you open them in Safari? If it's the first then I guess the complaint makes sense if you are implementing some kind of "Reader" mode in the app itself by scraping the content.
- stan503 8y ago
  It's using the official Hacker News API (https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API), not scraping web sites.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    I think dewey is asking about the articles linked from HN, not HN itself. The post implies that when you click on an article from NYT/NPR/etc, it shows the content inside the app (since there's a separate button to open it in Safari), doesn't it?
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      It might not be a desirable behavior for some users but it shouldn't be forbidden… The client I'm using also leaves the choice of opening within the app or going through the native browser.
- Globz 8y ago
  I am currently using an HN client on iOS which parses the article links for you and renders them into a "reader" mode without leaving the app, you can also open the link via Safari or save it to pocket. This is exactly what his app is doing, I fail to see what are the differences between the two?
  - raydev 8y ago
    The app you're using: - is older and predates this particular restriction - OR the reviewers overlooked it App Store reviews are really a gamble when you start linking to websites in your app. It's just a shitty experience for the developer in general.
mscasts 8y ago
Have you tried to be wealthy and/or an important app developer?
- redial 8y ago
  Rules 1 and 2.
  - mscasts 8y ago
    What are you refering to? HN guidelines? I was just trying to be funny as well as point out the obvious reason why Apple won't care about him :)
    - Anechoic 8y ago
      I think s/he is saying - Rule 1: be wealthy, Rule 2: be an important app developer
      - mscasts 8y ago
        Of course that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
    - mjlee 8y ago
      I think it's a play on a fairly common meme from Reddit. Early example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/3cdmps/rule_1_be_attractive_rule_2_dont_be_unattractive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/3cdmps/rule_1_be...
      - acheron 8y ago
        It’s an SNL sketch from years before reddit existed.
        mjlee 8y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8 - Thanks!
zvovu 8y ago
The downside of curated app stores...
z3t4 8y ago
I wouln't like if someone scraped my web site, and put it in a iPhone app. Why not just open the links in a web browser !?
- rpeden 8y ago
  ...that's what the app is doing. It was just opening the links in a webview inside the app instead of tossing the user over into Safari every time they click a link. There was no scraping happening.
  - z3t4 8y ago
    How much control do the app have over a web-view? Would it for example be able to log user input (steal passwords), or insert content (ads) ? Do the web view make it's own https request ?
    - epse 8y ago
      The app can tell the webview: open this URL. That's pretty much it. Injecting could theoretically happen, but only by showing a page that looks like the original but isn't.
sokoloff 8y ago
Apple told you what to do: > Require users to customize their news sources upon launching your app Make it a setting. Anyone who is going to use your app is qualified to paste a URL into a text field (or click a radio button indicating they want to use news.yc vs old.xy)
- ape4 8y ago
  Let the user select - How many articles per page - Only article with N upvotes - Don't display articles already read - etc
- stevewodil 8y ago
  News Sources: Hacker News (On/Off) Imagine they accept it like that haha
melbourne_mat 8y ago
Why do you need an app to view a web site? Surely you've heard of the web browser?
pmilla1606 8y ago
This is a shame, I'm sorry to hear. I loved this app for a long time because it was the only one (that I found) that would cache comment threads on the device - this meant I could read comments on the subway and/or without access to the internet. A few months ago the app was rewritten in Swift and lost my most treasured feature, not that it matters anymore. Thanks for the years of connectivity-anxiety free comment reading! Edit: If you do get passed this (I really hope you do) please consider adding an option that would fetch and save comments on the device. I'll pay for it.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  I think Materialistic (a popular HN app for Android) does this. I can't remember getting "you need to be online" error ever, it just uses whatever comments cached last time I updated. I don't know if it has an iOS version.
dsjoerg 8y ago
Why not launch Safari when the user clicks on an article? And make it clear that you have permission from HN to use their API? Having used your app for exactly one minute, that seems like it would address their concerns and preserve usability.
- lathiat 8y ago
  Given the "back" link from Safari to your app since iOS 11? (10?) - this is the right solution IMHO.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    Especially with the swipe gestures on the new phones since the X, my pet peeve are apps that use web views inside their app inside of just opening Safari. The worst offender is the Gmail app since half the links I click on there interact with cookies in the Safari app (account activation, notifications, etc). And Gmail will even keep nagging me to install Chrome which I will never do. Ugh, I really need to switch away from Gmail.
    - jasonmp85 8y ago
      this ain’t it I don’t want my twitter and RSS reader app exploding my safari tab count. I look at articles all the time in those apps and decide not to open them in safari.
    - kemayo 8y ago
      And it keeps on ignoring the "don't ask me about Chrome / Safari again" toggle...
      - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
        They're doing the same in the YouTube app, and even if you choose "Safari" they're not opening Safari, but showing an in-app webview to siphon every last bit of your browsing activity. Truly disgusting.
- 8y ago
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I see the comments are already filling up with the usual cries of how this is what you get when you play in a curated market, but something about this doesn't make sense. Apple provides several views specifically designed to show web content: UIWebView, WKWebView, and SFSafariViewController. This ruling of theirs would apply to all uses of these views that aren't for specific domains and URLs known in advance, which makes no sense. There are literally hundreds of thousands of apps across all kinds of categories that display websites within the app. I've personally launched dozens of apps that have this functionality and never received a rejection for it, or heard of anyone who has. Moreover, there are no mechanisms that I'm even aware of to provide Apple with proof of "permission" to display a URL. So the path you're supposed to take is to wait for a rejection and then submit that proof to the reviewer in your resubmission? Or is this supposed to go in the review notes? Presumably you saying you have permission isn't enough, so what do they want, a link to a PDF of a signed contract that their legal team can review? Really doubt it. None of this is meant to be defensive of Apple or an attack on the author of this article. It just sounds like there was a mistake or error in communication somewhere. I don't think Apple's intent here is to disallow any app that opens a URL, but I guess we'll see.
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  Thank you, this is the best comment so far.
apo 8y ago
This might be a good time to reconsider what made iOS the best platform for this application in the first place. For example, can the app be re-packaged as an HTML5 app instead? What's the compelling advantage for building on iOS for this application?
- sydd 8y ago
  That would be the same from a legal standpoint. You app would just get shittier UX, nothing else.
  - latortuga 8y ago
    This is not a situation where legality is in play, it's an Apple policy rejection. Apple can say it's "for legal reasons" but Apple is enforcing it, not the government. Nobody is suing OP.
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      I think what your parent comment is saying is that the Apple policy rejection would be exactly the same whether the app is native or HTML5.
- jurip 8y ago
  I'd imagine the compelling advantage is being a native iOS application: "I wasn’t satisfied with the features of the Hacker News clients I had downloaded from the app store".
  - apo 8y ago
    It looks like I wasn't clear - I'm suggesting an in-browser app independent of iOS and the app store.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Discovery via the app store.
mosselman 8y ago
What nonsense. The links that HN has are all to publicly available websites, isn't the whole reason for their existence to be visited? How is this different from a web browser?
- cronix 8y ago
  > How is this different from a web browser? or a search engine
yohann305 8y ago
your app mechanics aren't that much different than Reddit, am i wrong? How is Reddit doing it without being removed?
gecko39 8y ago
One option is to submit the app under a new dev account with a few tweaked variables ( name, colors, screenshots ) I feel like some of these rejections depend on the reviewer you get that day; and once an app is flagged, it's hard to recover.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  This is a really bad idea. These platforms like Apple and Google control large online ecosystems, and they're known to permaban people across the board when they step out of line. There are dozens of stories about Google basically terminating all relationships with someone (including their Gmail, Drive content, etc.) over Play Store dev account hijinks. I presume the author of the article has an iPhone. If he intends to be able to use an iPhone, screwing around with making Apple accounts that pretend to be different people to sneak an app past the reviews is not a good decision. The developer could find themselves unable to use any Apple account or service.
outadoc 8y ago
Are you displaying the articles in a standard Safari view like Tweetbot & co? And are you sure the problem isn't triggered by the favicons (aka copyrighted logos) on the main list?
ahmedalsudani 8y ago
I'm sure this is an error, and a moronic one at that. Otherwise even safari infringes on Apple's rules. The real maddening thing is that there is no appeal process and no (mainstream) way to distribute your app if Apple has a vague problem with it. I hope for a day we will have mobile devices that are free and usable.
- jmull 8y ago
  No, Safari doesn't have this problem. One remedy the OP was offered was to require the user to choose the third-party content to display. That's just what Safari does. (BTW, I don't think it's an appropriate remedy in this situation. I'm just saying this isn't inconsistent with Safari.)
  - ahmedalsudani 8y ago
    It's not so simple. When you load HN on safari, it doesn't prompt you which links on HN you'd like to allow visits to. A tap on the link is what signals your intent. I fail to see how downloading an HN app is any different from visiting HN in safari. There are probably links to websites that link to the wider Web too on the safari new tab page (though I haven't used a fresh safari in some time so I might be mistaken).
Tomte 8y ago
> Questions like, “How is my app different than all the other Hacker News apps out there?” were ignored. I understand the frustration that leads to this question, but it is wholly irrelevant and only loses you a bit of the reviewer's attention span.
- everyone 8y ago
  "it is wholly irrelevant" Nonsense. It seems like the developer was willing to make any changes Apple wished in order to conform to their policies. His impediment was that he could not figure out what those changes were. If very similar app X is ok, and my app is not, then asking what the crucial difference is, is a very apt question which may lead directly to the specific issue. If we cant be sensible, ask sensible questions and have a sensible conversation about an issue with another human, in order to try and resolve a problem in good faith, then I guess we should all just go stick our heads in buckets of water.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    They told him whoch changes they want him to make. He dances around it a lot with "surely I can't get consent from the whole Internet", but he did understand that they want him to use Safari. I don't agree with Apple here, I think his app should be fine. But that's what they said, and just because they did not pull the other apps yet (for all we know), doesn't mean he has a point asking about those.
    - option_greek 8y ago
      And why not ? How else will we question arbitrary enforcement without pointing out to the instances of arbitrary enforcement ? Surely, he is not asking that they take down those other apps. He just wants to be in the same bucket as the others.
      - Tomte 8y ago
        You don't discuss arbitrary enforcement with Apple's reviewer. Either they enforce arbitrarily, or they don't. In neither case do they care about your opinion on it. If you want to have that discussion, have it. On your blog. On Hacker News. On Medium. But not in the "please reinstate my app" conversation with Apple.
bluetwo 8y ago
It seems to me by saying "Attach documentary evidence in the App Review Information section in App Store Connect granting you permission to use these sources" they are just asking for a paper trail of your rights to use that information. Why can't you include the agreement for the API as documentation of this? Seems really straight forward. They are trying to protect themselves, not get into a philosophical battle over software and media copyrights.
- stan503 8y ago
  I have pointed them to the API documentation that I use, however they were uninterested in that. I also tried contacting the maintainers of the API, they didn't have anything for me.
  - TylerE 8y ago
    Don't point them to, INCLUDE. #1 rule of dealing with bureaucrats: They are lazier than you can possibly imagine. Indulge them.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    I would obtain a full copy of the copyright laws, ask your lawyer to put them on legal paperhead in a PDF, then attach them in full to your email.
    - 7Z7 8y ago
      I'd be interested to know if a "full copy of the copyright laws" would fit in a standard email payload
- jobigoud 8y ago
  > Why can't you include the agreement for the API as documentation of this? If I understand correctly they are having a problem with the inclusion of third party pages. So he would have to provide permission from all the sources of articles, like WSJ, NPR, LA Times, any website linked, etc.
wild_preference 8y ago
> As for their alternatives, kicking the user out to Safari would significantly reduce the usability of the app. Not at all. When you open a website in Safari from an app, the user gets a first class website-browser experience without your chrome, and a "< Back to your app" button in the menuline.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  It opens the page in a WebView. What's the problem?
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    They're saying it's a better experience. I'm saying I'd rather have it in the browser that I already use. Good example being that I want to keep the article open or accumulate them in Safari instead of have this weird modal article-viewing system in the app. Various Reddit apps inline articles and I think it's just a worst experience.
alan_wade 8y ago
Can't wait for PWAs to truly take off, so we can all build for an open platform again, without having to deal withh this nonsense.
- cronix 8y ago
  Isn't Apple the main holdup for this though? They only recently allowed some things, but look at the list of things you can do on android vs ios when it comes to PWA's [1]. Things like not even notifying the user that they can install it as a PWA, and no push notification functionality are 2 pretty big barriers to having it actually work well. From what I've read, v12 didn't add any new capabilities over 11.3, which only fairly recently introduced very limited PWA functionality. I don't really see Apple doing much more on this front than they have. It makes no financial sense for them as some smallish percentage of appstore apps could be replaced with PWA's. What's their incentive? They will lose some revenue. [1] https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430dee3a7 https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-her...
bertil 8y ago
I am curious if that kind of arbitrary myopic judgement will hurt Apple in the long term, as influential developers end up using Android because it supports more options.
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
"But others do it too" is always a weak defence.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Precedent is important. So important in fact that it is a widely used mechanism in courts of law when an issue is not cut and dry. If you lay out a set of rules which are only randomly enforced then your 'rules' become useless.
  - _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
    I didn't know Apple now was a "courts of law" in the US, this is huge!
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      Well that's one way to interpret what I said...
tkcins 8y ago
>kicking the user out to Safari would significantly reduce the usability of the app Am I the only one who HATES when apps open links inside a webview and you have to tap yet another button to open the link in Safari? Most apps do that and they annoy the hell out of me.
pashabitz 8y ago
I think it's important to look at the broader issue: "App stores" are walled gardens, policed by corporations and are the opposite of freedom. The web is open and free. We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web. This is just one symptom.
- avip 8y ago
  Alas, a walled garden is not the opposite of freedom. Indeed, in many places, living in a walled garden will make you factually freeer than your fellows outside.
  - fatbird 8y ago
    This is an under-represented viewpoint. The freedom we constantly discuss in terms of app stores is freedom of possibility, but it comes at a cost in time and effort that reduces one's material freedom.
  - Dotnaught 8y ago
    Your argument misrepresents the metaphor. It's the wall that's the barrier to freedom, not what goes on within.
    - avip 8y ago
      A wall can provide much freedom, depending on what’s outside. Freedom is a complicated term.
      - Dotnaught 8y ago
        Freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. You're constructing a scenario to justify an abstract argument. The wall is the only salient feature in the walled garden metaphor. There's no terror lurking outside. If you mean to imply that Apple's oversight has some advantages, such as security, that's a separate issue. In the context of Apple's app store rules, the wall refers to Apple's rules. The absence of those rules does not reduce your freedom as a developer; you're can still abide by them without Apple requiring your to do so. But you have more choice without the rules.
option_greek 8y ago
It's sad that most of the comments seem to suggest that while it is not ideal, this is indeed the rule and either the links should be opened in safari or this is nothing new. That such a common functionality isn't allowed on ios while showing arbitrary enforcement is a real travesty. I'm surprised how tepid most of the comments are.
- draw_down 8y ago
  Sure it's sad. Well, here we are.
deleted 8y ago
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rumori 8y ago
I've checked couple of popular apps on the App Store and here are my findings: - Twitter: uses SFSafariViewController - Reddit: uses custom in-app web view, shows page title and url on top, provides "open in Safari" option through share button - Instagram: uses custom in-app web view, shows page title and url on top, provides the built in share-sheet, interestingly disabling open in Safari, but enabling "Add to Reading list" Your current app on the App Store embeds third party content in an in-app web view, without showing the title or original URL on top and without being able to open the link in Safari. I suggest you to either use SFSafariViewController for the third party content or mimic something similar with a proper title bar and and share button with Open in Safari option.
- zhobbs 8y ago
  Personally, I feel like the correct thing to do for the user is to use SFSafariViewController. Custom webviews are pretty annoying IMO.
- abalone 8y ago
  That would make sense except the author said they have a “show in Safari” button for each article. Apple’s reply was very specific and said nothing about just adding titles and URLs or the safari view controller.
  - rumori 8y ago
    In the current App Store version the share button embeds both the original and HN discussion link into a promotional message about the app. Not providing attribution in the form of the address bar (title + url) might be the main problem here but I personally feel fixing sharing would help as well.
    - ypeterholmes 8y ago
      Regardless the lack of communication from Apple about what needs to be done differently is infuriating.
- elliekelly 8y ago
LeicaLatte 8y ago
Why is this an app? seems to be a terrible candidate in the first place. Why don't you make a website?
- lawlessone 8y ago
  it's already a website? you're using it right now..
burtonator 8y ago
I just wrote up a long response to this rather than in comment form: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442147 The main issue is - don't be a sharecropper. The problem is that many people can't avoid it and get sucked in regardless.
writepub 8y ago
Apple is a monopoly in the apps market, controlling 66% [1] of the $70B annually. It's practices are now going to be litigated at the supreme court level [2] Apple's only defense, that it isn't a majority of the unit sales in Mobile phones, is a convenient strawman distracting from the fact that they ARE a majority in the app store market. Increasingly, people are finding such excuses misleading and outdated [3] I hope Apple losses in the supreme court, as their app store process makes a mockery of an individual's ownership of the iPhone they paid for. Imagine if you bought a house, and the builder got to decide what furniture could and couldn't be put in it. Additionally, it's time for the EU and FTC to regulate Apple and the like, on realistic definitions of monopoly and antitrust [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-nearly-double-that-of-google-play-in-first-half-of-2018/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-n... [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17479480/supreme-court-apple-vs-pepper-antitrust-lawsuit-standing-explainer https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17479480/supreme-court-ap... [3]: https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benefit-from-an-outdated-definition-of-monopoly/ https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benef...
giarc 8y ago
There are a lot of complaints about "X app does this, why can't mine." The app store isn't a democracy, they can and do make up their own rules and they can apply them how they want. Think of the Simpsons episode and the "No Homer's Club". They can allow one Homer, and reject all other Homers if they want.
abalone 8y ago
I’m confused. What’s the violation here? Apps are supposed to open links in Safari “outside of the app” unless they have permission? What about in-app browsers???? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram... they all open links inside their app, in an in-app browser. Can somebody please clarify Apple’s rules here? (No snark please.)
hiccuphippo 8y ago
I guess your app is basically a browser. And so, you are competing with their own browser. What else can you expect from a walled garden?
lostgame 8y ago
“It felt like I was arguing with a robot.” How much of the App Store review process is automated these days, anyways? One of my largest laments for the last 8 years or so with the App Store is the lack of a phone number in the appeals process for applications. I feel speaking out loud with a real person would force answers to a lot of these questions, especially ‘why does ‘x’ get away with this and I can’t?’
- reagank 8y ago
  > I feel speaking out loud with a real person would force answers to a lot of these questions Oh, hey, we've arrived at the reason that phone number doesn't exist. The ambiguity gives Apple flexibility, and I doubt they have any plans to remove it in the near future (How I'd love to be wrong!)
coldtea 8y ago
>Showing articles from random third party sources is pretty much THE feature of a Hacker News client app. No, that should be showing the HN discussion. For the articles itself, you could always forward an open the original page in an embedded webkit view.
coldtea 8y ago
>* Questions like, “How is my app different than all the other Hacker News apps out there?” were ignored. (...) It makes you wonder: if this rule is supposed to be enforced by app review, how does ANY Hacker News client make it through app review?* That's not a very good question to argue with Apple about. It's like saying the traffic cop "but there are all those other cares going beyond 70 mph, why stop me?".
- lostgame 8y ago
  Except speeding as a law makes a lot more sense, and, in the case of the cop, you're actually able to appeal to a real person.
makecheck 8y ago
I think what bugs me most about app review is that these things never come up for 1.0 or even 1.15. It’s some minor update where THEN Apple complains about minutiae that have existed since 1.0. Heck, they once complained about not having a Minimize button in a window (literally all previous versions lacked it).
sonnyblarney 8y ago
It's fine if Apple wants to control their store, but that only apps approved by them, in their store, should be allowed ... should be illegal.
Animats 8y ago
Why is there a need for a "Hacker News client"? It's a web site.
- willio58 8y ago
  So is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc.
s17n 8y ago
Sounds like their problem is that you don't have permission from Hacker News to launch a Hacker News app? To be honest, this is a good policy - the app store is inundated with shitty apps that capitalize on well known properties in this way and monetize their users with ads for even shittier apps, with straight up scams being the plankton on which this ecosystem depends.
ypeterholmes 8y ago
Seems like a lot of these issues could be resolved with better communication, such as a call with a real person. The author mentions "It felt like I was arguing with a robot." Too many of these large companies (Google, Facebook, Apple) have become faceless.
vikasnair 8y ago
I had a very similar problem with an iOS app [1] I published which aggregated 3rd-party news content via RSS. It took 3 months of back-and-forth with Apple Review to bypass those legality and content clauses in addition to a “limited functionality” clause. The key features introduced that finally put me past the review board were: * Embedding a link to Safari on each news article cell * Only allow content to display in SFSafariViewController (this was desired anyways) * Allowing user to pick and choose categories of news to be shown * A progress tracking feature which very simply measures and displays users’ time spent reading The former two got me past the clauses identified in this article, re: 3rd party content. The latter two helped me to prove my app did something other than display 3rd party content (the limited functionality clause). Was frustrating to find these workarounds, especially when the App Review board is not very responsive. Thankfully, some kind soul at Apple called me and helped me resolve everything within a day after my 5th consecutive reject. [1] http://appstore.com/dossierallyouneedtoknow http://appstore.com/dossierallyouneedtoknow
dzonga 8y ago
why bother making a native app ? simply, when a web app would suffice in terms of a PWA o? Aye, fuxk the so called walled gardens.
i386 8y ago
Very rich of Apple to reject this app when Apple News aggregates news, doesn't display original URLs, etc.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  Apple News has a license to distribute that content from the content creators. OP doesn't. Edit: To say I don't agree with the way the law shakes out with respect to copyright enforcement on the internet but that's the way it works right now. I would even suggest that recent legislation in Europe will pull us in the wrong direction. Just another example of why it's important for our legislatures (and increasingly, judges) to have a firm understanding of how technology works so we aren't left with these hamfisted applications of ancient regulations to modern technology.
ryandrake 8y ago
> 5.2.2 Third Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Interesting.. I had an app in the Apple App Store for some time that essentially scraped a service provider’s web site, allowing the user to invoke features of that site. Essentially wrapping an ugly web site in a pretty iOS interface. Never even considered “getting authorization” from them. It survived in the iOS App Store for a few years until I took it down for other reasons. Wonder how new this rule is or how evenly it’s enforced.
solarkraft 8y ago
Let me fix this for you: Don't invest any resources into developing for an Apple platform. They will fuck you over whenever they feel like it.
sixtypoundhound 8y ago
The time has come: OEM's that lock their users into a specific app distribution platform need to be slapped with an anti-trust lawsuit. Hard. When you have Apple's market share... well, with great power comes great responsibility....
bramvandervoet 8y ago
Enough HN pwa to test https://hnpwa.com https://hnpwa.com. Afcourse Apple is not fully embracing Pwa like Chrome/Google
bparsons 8y ago
If displaying links to other websites violates the TOS, then iOS is completely broken. Whatever they are selling their customers is no longer the internet. It is a weird, hyper-monetized digital playpen.

369 points by stan503 8y ago

ary 8y ago

One has to wonder if what Apple actually objects to is the display of logos (from the favicons) in the list of links. They’re an incredibly brand conscious company and almost certain have people scouting for things that could get them sued by the owners of other brands.

sokoloff 8y ago
It would seem to be odd for a mark owner to sue after specifically putting out a favicon, which is intended to be used to visually ID that site in a sea of tabs/links.
- ary 8y ago
  While I wholeheartedly agree I mean to focus on the perception of a problem and not the presence of any actual problem. Regardless of where the logo is acquired from what is more important is where it is shown and what it is shown next to. This is what I mean by brand sensitivity. The article makes it seem (to me) like the reviewer has a problem with a specific aspect of the app but is using a somewhat broadly interpretable part of the guidelines as the reason for rejection. This is why I suspect that a visual change regarding the logos might help the app pass review.

mmjaa 8y ago

Surely its enough to get a Hacker News person to give you a claim waiver or something? I mean, did you try contacting the HN folks?

dewey 8y ago
The article doesn't mention YC, it mentions Techcrunch, Conde Nast etc.
stan503 8y ago
Actually I did ask them, they (unsurprisingly) didn't have anything like that.
- s17n 8y ago
  Given the huge volume of crappy apps in the store, I think the general public is well served by this policy even if it does suck for well intentioned developers like yourself.

salvar 8y ago

This seems weird enough to be an error of some kind. Not that Apple is likely to fix it, but enforcing this rule would exclude: - All Reddit apps - All HN apps - Twitter - Facebook - Google News - Any link or news aggregator I guess even a browser wouldn't fly, since it "displays full articles from multiple news sources."

toyg 8y ago
Unless they are cracking down on apps that do nothing but republish links and feeds. Most Reddit apps will let you post and engage; some HN apps will do that too (shout out to my beloved Minihack). This particular app didn't, so it's difficult to argue that it provided anything more than republishing links... something that surely should be done only by their News app now /s
- salvar 8y ago
  I guess... but that still leaves pretty much all news aggregators. Google News doesn't let you do much other than read news from all over the internet. It's functionally exactly the same, only with a different aggregating algorithm.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  It's been a while since I developed an iOS app, but I seem to remember there being a rule that you "app" can't just be a wrapper for a web site.
mikepurvis 8y ago
Even the Hangouts client opens links which people send me in its own internal browser— a behaviour I actually don't care for, since I'd prefer it spawned tabs in the regular Safari app. But it's exactly the same thing this guy is getting in trouble for.
nambit 8y ago
? A lot of reddit and HN apps don't display the articles in app. Some of them open browser pages. I don't see how your "All ... apps" is quantified.

adrianN 8y ago

The hardships of developing for closed platforms. At least your livelihood didn't depend on that App.

wsc981 8y ago

Painful, but I guess it's up to the individual AppStore reviewer to figure out what is ok or not. I actually created a few years ago a HackerNews client as well for iOS, but it never got through the review process, not even version 1.0. I was surprised, since many other HackerNews apps with similar features were allowed. At that point I just gave up and put the source code on Github, for whole the world to see. I believe this way it might still have helped me find new job opportunities, since companies could see a bit of my coding style. So I believe in the end not all work was for nothing.

gurpreet- 8y ago
Yes, it would help to know why that condition is there in the first place and also why Apple exercise it for some apps and not others. There's little app developers can do about it for iOS. On Android you can install new app stores, but with Apple you're forced to use theirs. This can be both a blessing and a curse. In this case, it's just unfortunate luck.
fouc 8y ago
I'd assume other reviewers were involved once he challenged the results.

jgh 8y ago

Looks like Apple has a history of removing third party reader apps. See a discussion from a couple years ago on Reddit apps getting nuked: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/4edaee/looks_like_the_app_store_is_pulling_all_third/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/4edaee/looks_like_t... edit: looks like that time it was for NSFW content....

sushibowl 8y ago
It should be well known by now that Apple developers serve at the pleasure of the king (https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the-king/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the...).

chipgap98 8y ago

There must be thousands and thousands of apps that function similar to HN clients. Providing a wrapper of an existing site and some additionally functionality seems pretty standard. This is another sad example of the power the internet giants have over developers when we're forced to build for their platforms in order to get users.

kara-1234 8y ago
Completely agreed here, we gave these companies all the power to keep us safe, integrate into our lives, and at the drop of a hat now they can take it away from you with no real way to fight back.

jey 8y ago

> - Only show a portion of the article within your app and link out to Safari for the rest Reading between the lines here, is the problem that ad tracking works less in these apps due to having separate cookies, so publishers are pressuring Apple to remove these apps?

toyg 8y ago
More likely that is about Apple pushing its News app.
- wild_preference 8y ago
  Aside: Is there a reasonable way to get any non-American/non-English news in the news app? I find it a bit mindblowing that "Discover Channels" and the topics list are all in English and for a country I don't live in. For example, there's an option to add every BBC subcategory except BBC Mundo (i.e. Latin America).

sparrish 8y ago

A lesson learned by a lot of iOS devs. If you want to play in their game, you have to play by their rules, even if they don't apply those rules to everyone else.

dewey 8y ago

Is the app actually parsing the articles and displaying them the app or just like other HN clients that just have links and you open them in Safari? If it's the first then I guess the complaint makes sense if you are implementing some kind of "Reader" mode in the app itself by scraping the content.

stan503 8y ago
It's using the official Hacker News API (https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API), not scraping web sites.
- icebraining 8y ago
  I think dewey is asking about the articles linked from HN, not HN itself. The post implies that when you click on an article from NYT/NPR/etc, it shows the content inside the app (since there's a separate button to open it in Safari), doesn't it?
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    It might not be a desirable behavior for some users but it shouldn't be forbidden… The client I'm using also leaves the choice of opening within the app or going through the native browser.
Globz 8y ago
I am currently using an HN client on iOS which parses the article links for you and renders them into a "reader" mode without leaving the app, you can also open the link via Safari or save it to pocket. This is exactly what his app is doing, I fail to see what are the differences between the two?
- raydev 8y ago
  The app you're using: - is older and predates this particular restriction - OR the reviewers overlooked it App Store reviews are really a gamble when you start linking to websites in your app. It's just a shitty experience for the developer in general.

mscasts 8y ago

Have you tried to be wealthy and/or an important app developer?

redial 8y ago
Rules 1 and 2.
- mscasts 8y ago
  What are you refering to? HN guidelines? I was just trying to be funny as well as point out the obvious reason why Apple won't care about him :)
  - Anechoic 8y ago
    I think s/he is saying - Rule 1: be wealthy, Rule 2: be an important app developer
    - mscasts 8y ago
      Of course that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
  - mjlee 8y ago
    I think it's a play on a fairly common meme from Reddit. Early example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/3cdmps/rule_1_be_attractive_rule_2_dont_be_unattractive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/3cdmps/rule_1_be...
    - acheron 8y ago
      It’s an SNL sketch from years before reddit existed.
      - mjlee 8y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8 - Thanks!

zvovu 8y ago

The downside of curated app stores...

z3t4 8y ago

I wouln't like if someone scraped my web site, and put it in a iPhone app. Why not just open the links in a web browser !?

rpeden 8y ago
...that's what the app is doing. It was just opening the links in a webview inside the app instead of tossing the user over into Safari every time they click a link. There was no scraping happening.
- z3t4 8y ago
  How much control do the app have over a web-view? Would it for example be able to log user input (steal passwords), or insert content (ads) ? Do the web view make it's own https request ?
  - epse 8y ago
    The app can tell the webview: open this URL. That's pretty much it. Injecting could theoretically happen, but only by showing a page that looks like the original but isn't.

sokoloff 8y ago

Apple told you what to do: > Require users to customize their news sources upon launching your app Make it a setting. Anyone who is going to use your app is qualified to paste a URL into a text field (or click a radio button indicating they want to use news.yc vs old.xy)

ape4 8y ago
Let the user select - How many articles per page - Only article with N upvotes - Don't display articles already read - etc
stevewodil 8y ago
News Sources: Hacker News (On/Off) Imagine they accept it like that haha

melbourne_mat 8y ago

Why do you need an app to view a web site? Surely you've heard of the web browser?

pmilla1606 8y ago

This is a shame, I'm sorry to hear. I loved this app for a long time because it was the only one (that I found) that would cache comment threads on the device - this meant I could read comments on the subway and/or without access to the internet. A few months ago the app was rewritten in Swift and lost my most treasured feature, not that it matters anymore. Thanks for the years of connectivity-anxiety free comment reading! Edit: If you do get passed this (I really hope you do) please consider adding an option that would fetch and save comments on the device. I'll pay for it.

gnulinux 8y ago
I think Materialistic (a popular HN app for Android) does this. I can't remember getting "you need to be online" error ever, it just uses whatever comments cached last time I updated. I don't know if it has an iOS version.

dsjoerg 8y ago

Why not launch Safari when the user clicks on an article? And make it clear that you have permission from HN to use their API? Having used your app for exactly one minute, that seems like it would address their concerns and preserve usability.

lathiat 8y ago
Given the "back" link from Safari to your app since iOS 11? (10?) - this is the right solution IMHO.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  Especially with the swipe gestures on the new phones since the X, my pet peeve are apps that use web views inside their app inside of just opening Safari. The worst offender is the Gmail app since half the links I click on there interact with cookies in the Safari app (account activation, notifications, etc). And Gmail will even keep nagging me to install Chrome which I will never do. Ugh, I really need to switch away from Gmail.
  - jasonmp85 8y ago
    this ain’t it I don’t want my twitter and RSS reader app exploding my safari tab count. I look at articles all the time in those apps and decide not to open them in safari.
  - kemayo 8y ago
    And it keeps on ignoring the "don't ask me about Chrome / Safari again" toggle...
    - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
      They're doing the same in the YouTube app, and even if you choose "Safari" they're not opening Safari, but showing an in-app webview to siphon every last bit of your browsing activity. Truly disgusting.
8y ago

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

I see the comments are already filling up with the usual cries of how this is what you get when you play in a curated market, but something about this doesn't make sense. Apple provides several views specifically designed to show web content: UIWebView, WKWebView, and SFSafariViewController. This ruling of theirs would apply to all uses of these views that aren't for specific domains and URLs known in advance, which makes no sense. There are literally hundreds of thousands of apps across all kinds of categories that display websites within the app. I've personally launched dozens of apps that have this functionality and never received a rejection for it, or heard of anyone who has. Moreover, there are no mechanisms that I'm even aware of to provide Apple with proof of "permission" to display a URL. So the path you're supposed to take is to wait for a rejection and then submit that proof to the reviewer in your resubmission? Or is this supposed to go in the review notes? Presumably you saying you have permission isn't enough, so what do they want, a link to a PDF of a signed contract that their legal team can review? Really doubt it. None of this is meant to be defensive of Apple or an attack on the author of this article. It just sounds like there was a mistake or error in communication somewhere. I don't think Apple's intent here is to disallow any app that opens a URL, but I guess we'll see.

VikingCoder 8y ago
Thank you, this is the best comment so far.

apo 8y ago

This might be a good time to reconsider what made iOS the best platform for this application in the first place. For example, can the app be re-packaged as an HTML5 app instead? What's the compelling advantage for building on iOS for this application?

sydd 8y ago
That would be the same from a legal standpoint. You app would just get shittier UX, nothing else.
- latortuga 8y ago
  This is not a situation where legality is in play, it's an Apple policy rejection. Apple can say it's "for legal reasons" but Apple is enforcing it, not the government. Nobody is suing OP.
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    I think what your parent comment is saying is that the Apple policy rejection would be exactly the same whether the app is native or HTML5.
jurip 8y ago
I'd imagine the compelling advantage is being a native iOS application: "I wasn’t satisfied with the features of the Hacker News clients I had downloaded from the app store".
- apo 8y ago
  It looks like I wasn't clear - I'm suggesting an in-browser app independent of iOS and the app store.
bdcravens 8y ago
Discovery via the app store.

mosselman 8y ago

What nonsense. The links that HN has are all to publicly available websites, isn't the whole reason for their existence to be visited? How is this different from a web browser?

cronix 8y ago
> How is this different from a web browser? or a search engine

yohann305 8y ago

your app mechanics aren't that much different than Reddit, am i wrong? How is Reddit doing it without being removed?

gecko39 8y ago

One option is to submit the app under a new dev account with a few tweaked variables ( name, colors, screenshots ) I feel like some of these rejections depend on the reviewer you get that day; and once an app is flagged, it's hard to recover.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
This is a really bad idea. These platforms like Apple and Google control large online ecosystems, and they're known to permaban people across the board when they step out of line. There are dozens of stories about Google basically terminating all relationships with someone (including their Gmail, Drive content, etc.) over Play Store dev account hijinks. I presume the author of the article has an iPhone. If he intends to be able to use an iPhone, screwing around with making Apple accounts that pretend to be different people to sneak an app past the reviews is not a good decision. The developer could find themselves unable to use any Apple account or service.

outadoc 8y ago

Are you displaying the articles in a standard Safari view like Tweetbot & co? And are you sure the problem isn't triggered by the favicons (aka copyrighted logos) on the main list?

ahmedalsudani 8y ago

I'm sure this is an error, and a moronic one at that. Otherwise even safari infringes on Apple's rules. The real maddening thing is that there is no appeal process and no (mainstream) way to distribute your app if Apple has a vague problem with it. I hope for a day we will have mobile devices that are free and usable.

jmull 8y ago
No, Safari doesn't have this problem. One remedy the OP was offered was to require the user to choose the third-party content to display. That's just what Safari does. (BTW, I don't think it's an appropriate remedy in this situation. I'm just saying this isn't inconsistent with Safari.)
- ahmedalsudani 8y ago
  It's not so simple. When you load HN on safari, it doesn't prompt you which links on HN you'd like to allow visits to. A tap on the link is what signals your intent. I fail to see how downloading an HN app is any different from visiting HN in safari. There are probably links to websites that link to the wider Web too on the safari new tab page (though I haven't used a fresh safari in some time so I might be mistaken).

Tomte 8y ago

> Questions like, “How is my app different than all the other Hacker News apps out there?” were ignored. I understand the frustration that leads to this question, but it is wholly irrelevant and only loses you a bit of the reviewer's attention span.

everyone 8y ago
"it is wholly irrelevant" Nonsense. It seems like the developer was willing to make any changes Apple wished in order to conform to their policies. His impediment was that he could not figure out what those changes were. If very similar app X is ok, and my app is not, then asking what the crucial difference is, is a very apt question which may lead directly to the specific issue. If we cant be sensible, ask sensible questions and have a sensible conversation about an issue with another human, in order to try and resolve a problem in good faith, then I guess we should all just go stick our heads in buckets of water.
- Tomte 8y ago
  They told him whoch changes they want him to make. He dances around it a lot with "surely I can't get consent from the whole Internet", but he did understand that they want him to use Safari. I don't agree with Apple here, I think his app should be fine. But that's what they said, and just because they did not pull the other apps yet (for all we know), doesn't mean he has a point asking about those.
  - option_greek 8y ago
    And why not ? How else will we question arbitrary enforcement without pointing out to the instances of arbitrary enforcement ? Surely, he is not asking that they take down those other apps. He just wants to be in the same bucket as the others.
    - Tomte 8y ago
      You don't discuss arbitrary enforcement with Apple's reviewer. Either they enforce arbitrarily, or they don't. In neither case do they care about your opinion on it. If you want to have that discussion, have it. On your blog. On Hacker News. On Medium. But not in the "please reinstate my app" conversation with Apple.

bluetwo 8y ago

It seems to me by saying "Attach documentary evidence in the App Review Information section in App Store Connect granting you permission to use these sources" they are just asking for a paper trail of your rights to use that information. Why can't you include the agreement for the API as documentation of this? Seems really straight forward. They are trying to protect themselves, not get into a philosophical battle over software and media copyrights.

stan503 8y ago
I have pointed them to the API documentation that I use, however they were uninterested in that. I also tried contacting the maintainers of the API, they didn't have anything for me.
- TylerE 8y ago
  Don't point them to, INCLUDE. #1 rule of dealing with bureaucrats: They are lazier than you can possibly imagine. Indulge them.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  I would obtain a full copy of the copyright laws, ask your lawyer to put them on legal paperhead in a PDF, then attach them in full to your email.
  - 7Z7 8y ago
    I'd be interested to know if a "full copy of the copyright laws" would fit in a standard email payload
jobigoud 8y ago
> Why can't you include the agreement for the API as documentation of this? If I understand correctly they are having a problem with the inclusion of third party pages. So he would have to provide permission from all the sources of articles, like WSJ, NPR, LA Times, any website linked, etc.

wild_preference 8y ago

> As for their alternatives, kicking the user out to Safari would significantly reduce the usability of the app. Not at all. When you open a website in Safari from an app, the user gets a first class website-browser experience without your chrome, and a "< Back to your app" button in the menuline.

EpicEng 8y ago
It opens the page in a WebView. What's the problem?
- wild_preference 8y ago
  They're saying it's a better experience. I'm saying I'd rather have it in the browser that I already use. Good example being that I want to keep the article open or accumulate them in Safari instead of have this weird modal article-viewing system in the app. Various Reddit apps inline articles and I think it's just a worst experience.

alan_wade 8y ago

Can't wait for PWAs to truly take off, so we can all build for an open platform again, without having to deal withh this nonsense.

cronix 8y ago
Isn't Apple the main holdup for this though? They only recently allowed some things, but look at the list of things you can do on android vs ios when it comes to PWA's [1]. Things like not even notifying the user that they can install it as a PWA, and no push notification functionality are 2 pretty big barriers to having it actually work well. From what I've read, v12 didn't add any new capabilities over 11.3, which only fairly recently introduced very limited PWA functionality. I don't really see Apple doing much more on this front than they have. It makes no financial sense for them as some smallish percentage of appstore apps could be replaced with PWA's. What's their incentive? They will lose some revenue. [1] https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430dee3a7 https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-her...

bertil 8y ago

I am curious if that kind of arbitrary myopic judgement will hurt Apple in the long term, as influential developers end up using Android because it supports more options.

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

"But others do it too" is always a weak defence.

EpicEng 8y ago
Precedent is important. So important in fact that it is a widely used mechanism in courts of law when an issue is not cut and dry. If you lay out a set of rules which are only randomly enforced then your 'rules' become useless.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
  I didn't know Apple now was a "courts of law" in the US, this is huge!
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Well that's one way to interpret what I said...

tkcins 8y ago

>kicking the user out to Safari would significantly reduce the usability of the app Am I the only one who HATES when apps open links inside a webview and you have to tap yet another button to open the link in Safari? Most apps do that and they annoy the hell out of me.

pashabitz 8y ago

I think it's important to look at the broader issue: "App stores" are walled gardens, policed by corporations and are the opposite of freedom. The web is open and free. We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web. This is just one symptom.

avip 8y ago
Alas, a walled garden is not the opposite of freedom. Indeed, in many places, living in a walled garden will make you factually freeer than your fellows outside.
- fatbird 8y ago
  This is an under-represented viewpoint. The freedom we constantly discuss in terms of app stores is freedom of possibility, but it comes at a cost in time and effort that reduces one's material freedom.
- Dotnaught 8y ago
  Your argument misrepresents the metaphor. It's the wall that's the barrier to freedom, not what goes on within.
  - avip 8y ago
    A wall can provide much freedom, depending on what’s outside. Freedom is a complicated term.
    - Dotnaught 8y ago
      Freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. You're constructing a scenario to justify an abstract argument. The wall is the only salient feature in the walled garden metaphor. There's no terror lurking outside. If you mean to imply that Apple's oversight has some advantages, such as security, that's a separate issue. In the context of Apple's app store rules, the wall refers to Apple's rules. The absence of those rules does not reduce your freedom as a developer; you're can still abide by them without Apple requiring your to do so. But you have more choice without the rules.

option_greek 8y ago

It's sad that most of the comments seem to suggest that while it is not ideal, this is indeed the rule and either the links should be opened in safari or this is nothing new. That such a common functionality isn't allowed on ios while showing arbitrary enforcement is a real travesty. I'm surprised how tepid most of the comments are.

draw_down 8y ago
Sure it's sad. Well, here we are.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rumori 8y ago

I've checked couple of popular apps on the App Store and here are my findings: - Twitter: uses SFSafariViewController - Reddit: uses custom in-app web view, shows page title and url on top, provides "open in Safari" option through share button - Instagram: uses custom in-app web view, shows page title and url on top, provides the built in share-sheet, interestingly disabling open in Safari, but enabling "Add to Reading list" Your current app on the App Store embeds third party content in an in-app web view, without showing the title or original URL on top and without being able to open the link in Safari. I suggest you to either use SFSafariViewController for the third party content or mimic something similar with a proper title bar and and share button with Open in Safari option.

zhobbs 8y ago
Personally, I feel like the correct thing to do for the user is to use SFSafariViewController. Custom webviews are pretty annoying IMO.
abalone 8y ago
That would make sense except the author said they have a “show in Safari” button for each article. Apple’s reply was very specific and said nothing about just adding titles and URLs or the safari view controller.
- rumori 8y ago
  In the current App Store version the share button embeds both the original and HN discussion link into a promotional message about the app. Not providing attribution in the form of the address bar (title + url) might be the main problem here but I personally feel fixing sharing would help as well.
  - ypeterholmes 8y ago
    Regardless the lack of communication from Apple about what needs to be done differently is infuriating.
elliekelly 8y ago

LeicaLatte 8y ago

Why is this an app? seems to be a terrible candidate in the first place. Why don't you make a website?

lawlessone 8y ago
it's already a website? you're using it right now..

burtonator 8y ago

I just wrote up a long response to this rather than in comment form: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442147 The main issue is - don't be a sharecropper. The problem is that many people can't avoid it and get sucked in regardless.

writepub 8y ago

Apple is a monopoly in the apps market, controlling 66% [1] of the $70B annually. It's practices are now going to be litigated at the supreme court level [2] Apple's only defense, that it isn't a majority of the unit sales in Mobile phones, is a convenient strawman distracting from the fact that they ARE a majority in the app store market. Increasingly, people are finding such excuses misleading and outdated [3] I hope Apple losses in the supreme court, as their app store process makes a mockery of an individual's ownership of the iPhone they paid for. Imagine if you bought a house, and the builder got to decide what furniture could and couldn't be put in it. Additionally, it's time for the EU and FTC to regulate Apple and the like, on realistic definitions of monopoly and antitrust [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-nearly-double-that-of-google-play-in-first-half-of-2018/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-n... [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17479480/supreme-court-apple-vs-pepper-antitrust-lawsuit-standing-explainer https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17479480/supreme-court-ap... [3]: https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benefit-from-an-outdated-definition-of-monopoly/ https://qz.com/work/1460402/google-facebook-and-amazon-benef...

giarc 8y ago

There are a lot of complaints about "X app does this, why can't mine." The app store isn't a democracy, they can and do make up their own rules and they can apply them how they want. Think of the Simpsons episode and the "No Homer's Club". They can allow one Homer, and reject all other Homers if they want.

abalone 8y ago

I’m confused. What’s the violation here? Apps are supposed to open links in Safari “outside of the app” unless they have permission? What about in-app browsers???? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram... they all open links inside their app, in an in-app browser. Can somebody please clarify Apple’s rules here? (No snark please.)

hiccuphippo 8y ago

I guess your app is basically a browser. And so, you are competing with their own browser. What else can you expect from a walled garden?

lostgame 8y ago

“It felt like I was arguing with a robot.” How much of the App Store review process is automated these days, anyways? One of my largest laments for the last 8 years or so with the App Store is the lack of a phone number in the appeals process for applications. I feel speaking out loud with a real person would force answers to a lot of these questions, especially ‘why does ‘x’ get away with this and I can’t?’

reagank 8y ago
> I feel speaking out loud with a real person would force answers to a lot of these questions Oh, hey, we've arrived at the reason that phone number doesn't exist. The ambiguity gives Apple flexibility, and I doubt they have any plans to remove it in the near future (How I'd love to be wrong!)

coldtea 8y ago

>Showing articles from random third party sources is pretty much THE feature of a Hacker News client app. No, that should be showing the HN discussion. For the articles itself, you could always forward an open the original page in an embedded webkit view.

coldtea 8y ago

>* Questions like, “How is my app different than all the other Hacker News apps out there?” were ignored. (...) It makes you wonder: if this rule is supposed to be enforced by app review, how does ANY Hacker News client make it through app review?* That's not a very good question to argue with Apple about. It's like saying the traffic cop "but there are all those other cares going beyond 70 mph, why stop me?".

lostgame 8y ago
Except speeding as a law makes a lot more sense, and, in the case of the cop, you're actually able to appeal to a real person.

makecheck 8y ago

I think what bugs me most about app review is that these things never come up for 1.0 or even 1.15. It’s some minor update where THEN Apple complains about minutiae that have existed since 1.0. Heck, they once complained about not having a Minimize button in a window (literally all previous versions lacked it).

sonnyblarney 8y ago

It's fine if Apple wants to control their store, but that only apps approved by them, in their store, should be allowed ... should be illegal.

Animats 8y ago

Why is there a need for a "Hacker News client"? It's a web site.

willio58 8y ago
So is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc.

s17n 8y ago

Sounds like their problem is that you don't have permission from Hacker News to launch a Hacker News app? To be honest, this is a good policy - the app store is inundated with shitty apps that capitalize on well known properties in this way and monetize their users with ads for even shittier apps, with straight up scams being the plankton on which this ecosystem depends.

ypeterholmes 8y ago

Seems like a lot of these issues could be resolved with better communication, such as a call with a real person. The author mentions "It felt like I was arguing with a robot." Too many of these large companies (Google, Facebook, Apple) have become faceless.

vikasnair 8y ago

I had a very similar problem with an iOS app [1] I published which aggregated 3rd-party news content via RSS. It took 3 months of back-and-forth with Apple Review to bypass those legality and content clauses in addition to a “limited functionality” clause. The key features introduced that finally put me past the review board were: * Embedding a link to Safari on each news article cell * Only allow content to display in SFSafariViewController (this was desired anyways) * Allowing user to pick and choose categories of news to be shown * A progress tracking feature which very simply measures and displays users’ time spent reading The former two got me past the clauses identified in this article, re: 3rd party content. The latter two helped me to prove my app did something other than display 3rd party content (the limited functionality clause). Was frustrating to find these workarounds, especially when the App Review board is not very responsive. Thankfully, some kind soul at Apple called me and helped me resolve everything within a day after my 5th consecutive reject. [1] http://appstore.com/dossierallyouneedtoknow http://appstore.com/dossierallyouneedtoknow

dzonga 8y ago

why bother making a native app ? simply, when a web app would suffice in terms of a PWA o? Aye, fuxk the so called walled gardens.

i386 8y ago

Very rich of Apple to reject this app when Apple News aggregates news, doesn't display original URLs, etc.

elliekelly 8y ago
Apple News has a license to distribute that content from the content creators. OP doesn't. Edit: To say I don't agree with the way the law shakes out with respect to copyright enforcement on the internet but that's the way it works right now. I would even suggest that recent legislation in Europe will pull us in the wrong direction. Just another example of why it's important for our legislatures (and increasingly, judges) to have a firm understanding of how technology works so we aren't left with these hamfisted applications of ancient regulations to modern technology.

ryandrake 8y ago

> 5.2.2 Third Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Interesting.. I had an app in the Apple App Store for some time that essentially scraped a service provider’s web site, allowing the user to invoke features of that site. Essentially wrapping an ugly web site in a pretty iOS interface. Never even considered “getting authorization” from them. It survived in the iOS App Store for a few years until I took it down for other reasons. Wonder how new this rule is or how evenly it’s enforced.

solarkraft 8y ago

Let me fix this for you: Don't invest any resources into developing for an Apple platform. They will fuck you over whenever they feel like it.

sixtypoundhound 8y ago

The time has come: OEM's that lock their users into a specific app distribution platform need to be slapped with an anti-trust lawsuit. Hard. When you have Apple's market share... well, with great power comes great responsibility....

bramvandervoet 8y ago

Enough HN pwa to test https://hnpwa.com https://hnpwa.com. Afcourse Apple is not fully embracing Pwa like Chrome/Google

bparsons 8y ago

If displaying links to other websites violates the TOS, then iOS is completely broken. Whatever they are selling their customers is no longer the internet. It is a weird, hyper-monetized digital playpen.