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Yeah, well, tell that to the App Store reviewers who rejected my games. Their argument basically went like this: Your app is clearly a web clipping. It's just
by dfabulich 5y ago
Yeah, well, tell that to the App Store reviewers who rejected my games.
Their argument basically went like this: Your app is clearly a web clipping. It's just your web site wrapped up as an app. We can see your web site, it works fine, and this app adds no additional value to the web site. You need to add features to your app--iOS-specific features--to make it worthy of being in the App Store.
I think it's fair to say that you can interpret rule 4.2 (and especially 4.2.2, which doesn't define a "web clipping" in the guidelines) in a few different ways, and that the "strict" App Store reviewers I faced were being perfectly reasonable in their interpretation of rule 4.2.
(To be clear, I think rule 4.2 is not a good rule, but I think the individual reviewers I spoke with were making a reasonable attempt to interpret rule 4.2.)
The "strict" interpretation is reasonable, but your interpretation (which I would call a "lax" interpretation) is also reasonable. You could say "well, if the web site is app-like--if the app has good, useful features--then it has more than minimal functionality and is worthy of being in the store." Both interpretations make sense.
The problem occurs when you stake your deployment strategy on the hope that you don't get a hardline App Store reviewer, and now, all of a sudden, you can't push bug fixes or compatibility updates to your iOS app, and your users are pissed.
- rchaud 5y agoWhy doesn't this policy apply to Amazon or Airbnb? What does the app offer that the website doesn't?
- philistine 5y agoWhat is said is that if you build something using web tech that is not available online it's fine, what you clearly did is duplicate what is already available on the web. Still an incredibly dumb rule.
- iJohnDoe 5y agoThere has always been a clear rule that an app can’t also be equally equivalent to a web site and easily available just as a web site. You have to make a choice that if you wrap your site as an app, and it’s the same, then the web site shouldn’t be accessible via the web browser.
- sroussey 5y agoHide that website as app.xyz.com so it takes work to get there from www.xyz.com