I am the developer of HACK which is a hacker news client app for iOS and android. I recently went through very similar experience with both Apple and Google, th

I am the developer of HACK which is a hacker news client app for iOS and android. I recently went through very similar experience with both Apple and Google, though Apple was more annoying. Both Apple and Google have been very annoying in review process albeit Google has been more annoying than Apple. Here was a recent Apple example: My app works by parsing the HTML of hacker news site. Recently, the site had a few small changes behind the scenes in the html which broke the XPath for the parser and thus broke my app. So I quickly fixed the issue and submitted updated to both Apple and Google. Usually Google used to be faster in reviewing apps in the past but something has changed and now Google seems to take longer to review app than Apple. Google took 4 days to review and approve the update this time. Basically the app was entirely broken for those days and I got countless justified emails from users. Apple was even more annoying. My app is available for both iOS and MacOS. It’s the same code base. MacOS one got approved within couple hours. iOS one is where the problem started. They rejected the iOS update telling me my app didn’t have features to report users, block users, flag objectionable content etc. This was the second time Apple had rejected for this same issue. I responded that I have already dealt with this in past and they need to login to the app with a user account before seeing buttons to flag objectionable content. Seemed obvious. Next they rejected the update again and this time it was even more annoying. They told me that my app didn’t have a way for users to delete their user account. I responded that my app is merely a client for hacker news and doesn’t have access to user accounts. They kept rejecting it. Eventually, I ended up adding a button for deleting user account: https://i.imgur.com/bvaZxBI_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium https://i.imgur.com/bvaZxBI_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&... The button tells the user to contact HN via email to delete accounts. Apple rejected it again saying this was not enough and having to email to delete account is not appropriate. After several back and forth, I asked them to call me. They did. I explained my situation and they finally understood my point that I don’t run hacker news. I merely provide a client app and explain to the user the steps HN provides for deleting accounts. After all this, they finally approved it. Apple in the past has also had situations where they will reject an update, I will respond, they will approve and then next update, they will reject again for the same issue. It’s like they don’t seem to read the previous review notes. With that said, Apple at least lets me talk to a human being and they seem to finally understand the issue. With Google, that seems impossible to do. Overall, I will rate Apple review 5/10 and Google would be 4/10. Neither should be happy with how they deal with it.