4 ms·

42% of rejections are for "other reason"--wow. No wonder people feel Apple reviews are capricious.

simonh 12y ago
All that means is that 42% of rejections are for reasons other than those in the top 10. They are still for specific reasons that are communicated to the developers though.
- deong 12y ago
  I would expect the arbitrary and capricious ones fall under the 6% heading of "did not comply with the Developer Program License Agreement". This is where they'd nail you for making fun of a political figure, or the iPhone factory worker game/critique.
mbesto 12y ago
I think you misread that. 42% is a combination of a bunch of reasons that contribute less than 2% of the overall pie. In other words, Apple has a long list of reasons why they reject apps, and generally speaking there isn't one area that all developers fail at.
melling 12y ago
Since this is HN, the best tech site on the net, perhaps we can move beyond our basic human nature to whine, and dig a little deeper. I was rejected once because I was copying a large database to the user's document directory, which would have been sync'ed with iCloud, thus wasting the user's space. That's probably reason "Other". Apple probably has 1000 little checks (e.g. Private api's), and they don't necessarily want to tell you all of them. Does anyone have a "capricious" rejection?
- Herald_MJ 12y ago
  fwiw I have been rejected for the same reason. I seem to remember it was a two-line fix for this.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I worked on an app that was rejected for taking an image of the user's Mac, obtained from public NSImage APIs, transmitting it over the local network, and displaying that image on an iPhone.
  - gress 12y ago
    What was the stated reason for rejection?
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Trademark violation. I should also note that the version that got rejected was 1.0.1, even though 1.0 had this feature and was accepted without issue.
      - gress 12y ago
        What was the violated trademark?
        mikeash 12y ago
        They weren't real specific (surprise surprise) but quoted the rule that "You may not use the Apple Logo or any other Apple-owned graphic symbol, logo, or icon...."
        gress 12y ago
        Are you saying they rejected your app because this screen transmitting feature captured the Apple Menu icon?!
        mikeash 12y ago
        Almost. In addition to an image of the screen, we superimposed it on top of the image returned from NSImageNameComputer, which grabs an icon-ish representation of the user's computer model (e.g. it produces an iMac image when run on an iMac), and that often includes an Apple logo. We also superimposed the icon of the selected app on the Mac, which was often iTunes or another Apple app. One of those is what they didn't like.
- clarky07 12y ago
  i have been rejected a large number of times for things not on that list that were also nearly always not true. i've appealed and won at least double digit rejections for various apps over the 4 years i've had apps on the store. I think i've had 4-5 updates rejected just in the last 6 months that i've subsequently gotten approved through appeal. lots of different things but an example: paraphrasing - "you included the audio in background setting but don't play audio in the background so we are rejecting the app" first off, who cares if i included a setting but didn't make use of it? second, i did in fact make use of it. there was simply a setting for a certain feature that could be either on or off.
  - beagle3 12y ago
    Apple has the mindset (and they are not entirely wrong) that if a feature in an app is confusing ("this switch doesn't do anything"), apple/iPhone will get the blame, either directly or by association.
    - clarky07 12y ago
      I'm not sure how that applies here? that's not what they rejected. rejected for something in settings file that has nothing to do with what a user ever sees.
  - sosborn 12y ago
    >first off, who cares if i included a setting but didn't make use of it? Were you doing this to avoid having the app killed when it went to the background?
    - clarky07 12y ago
      app already doesn't get killed. it's a gps tracking app that has gps in background mode also enabled.

All that means is that 42% of rejections are for reasons other than those in the top 10. They are still for specific reasons that are communicated to the developers though.

deong 12y ago
I would expect the arbitrary and capricious ones fall under the 6% heading of "did not comply with the Developer Program License Agreement". This is where they'd nail you for making fun of a political figure, or the iPhone factory worker game/critique.

mbesto 12y ago

I think you misread that. 42% is a combination of a bunch of reasons that contribute less than 2% of the overall pie. In other words, Apple has a long list of reasons why they reject apps, and generally speaking there isn't one area that all developers fail at.

melling 12y ago

Since this is HN, the best tech site on the net, perhaps we can move beyond our basic human nature to whine, and dig a little deeper. I was rejected once because I was copying a large database to the user's document directory, which would have been sync'ed with iCloud, thus wasting the user's space. That's probably reason "Other". Apple probably has 1000 little checks (e.g. Private api's), and they don't necessarily want to tell you all of them. Does anyone have a "capricious" rejection?

Herald_MJ 12y ago
fwiw I have been rejected for the same reason. I seem to remember it was a two-line fix for this.
mikeash 12y ago
I worked on an app that was rejected for taking an image of the user's Mac, obtained from public NSImage APIs, transmitting it over the local network, and displaying that image on an iPhone.
- gress 12y ago
  What was the stated reason for rejection?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Trademark violation. I should also note that the version that got rejected was 1.0.1, even though 1.0 had this feature and was accepted without issue.
    - gress 12y ago
      What was the violated trademark?
      - mikeash 12y ago
        They weren't real specific (surprise surprise) but quoted the rule that "You may not use the Apple Logo or any other Apple-owned graphic symbol, logo, or icon...."
        gress 12y ago
        Are you saying they rejected your app because this screen transmitting feature captured the Apple Menu icon?!
        mikeash 12y ago
        Almost. In addition to an image of the screen, we superimposed it on top of the image returned from NSImageNameComputer, which grabs an icon-ish representation of the user's computer model (e.g. it produces an iMac image when run on an iMac), and that often includes an Apple logo. We also superimposed the icon of the selected app on the Mac, which was often iTunes or another Apple app. One of those is what they didn't like.
clarky07 12y ago
i have been rejected a large number of times for things not on that list that were also nearly always not true. i've appealed and won at least double digit rejections for various apps over the 4 years i've had apps on the store. I think i've had 4-5 updates rejected just in the last 6 months that i've subsequently gotten approved through appeal. lots of different things but an example: paraphrasing - "you included the audio in background setting but don't play audio in the background so we are rejecting the app" first off, who cares if i included a setting but didn't make use of it? second, i did in fact make use of it. there was simply a setting for a certain feature that could be either on or off.
- beagle3 12y ago
  Apple has the mindset (and they are not entirely wrong) that if a feature in an app is confusing ("this switch doesn't do anything"), apple/iPhone will get the blame, either directly or by association.
  - clarky07 12y ago
    I'm not sure how that applies here? that's not what they rejected. rejected for something in settings file that has nothing to do with what a user ever sees.
- sosborn 12y ago
  >first off, who cares if i included a setting but didn't make use of it? Were you doing this to avoid having the app killed when it went to the background?
  - clarky07 12y ago
    app already doesn't get killed. it's a gps tracking app that has gps in background mode also enabled.