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> Notification center rejection Wait, that app had a fake keyboard inside a notification center widget? That's truly awful and roundly deserved to get rejected

by eridius 12y ago

> Notification center rejection Wait, that app had a fake keyboard inside a notification center widget? That's truly awful and roundly deserved to get rejected. > Sandbox forces feature removal I don't see how this is relevant to your comment. This wasn't a decision by app store review, or anything like that at all. This appears to simply be that the app was using functionality that is not possible to do inside the sandbox. If he was shipping on the MAS before, he must have been using a temporary exemption and would have known that it would have to get removed once those temporary exemptions stopped being allowed. This is a purely technical limitation and has nothing to do with the sort of management issues you're complaining about. > Slide to start That seems like a legit rejection to me as well. Looking at the actual screenshots, they tried to make their control look and feel pretty damn close to the official Apple control. This is a control that Apple spent years training people meant "unlock" (or more specifically, "unlock device"). So even though Apple isn't using it right now, they're still well within their rights to claim that it is too similar to Apple's own UI widget (especially for something that does completely different functionality). I bet that if the slider didn't look so intentionally similar to Apple's own widget, he wouldn't have had an issue. But he deliberately aped Apple's UI, and should have expected this to eventually happen. I'm also a bit irked that he's trying to play this up as a big "I got a bogus rejection!" thing and completely ignored the fact that Apple told him to remove or revise it. The issue is not that the act of sliding a finger across a screen to start the race is verboten. It's that his widget is too similar to Apple's UI. Note the actual quotes: > 8.3: Apps that appear confusingly similar to an existing Apple product, interface, or advertising theme will be rejected [emphasis mine] > The “slide to start the stopwatch” is similar to the “slide to unlock in iOS device”. > Thank you for your message. In order for the app to be reconsidered for the App Store, please remove or revise the Slide To Start feature. Have a good day. [emphasis mine] > Specifically, the Slide to Start Race UI element is not appropriate and not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines as it is too similar to the iOS Slide to Unlock UI. [emphasis mine] Instead of trying to stoke public outrage, he should just accept that his UI widget, which was very obviously based directly on the slide-to-unlock widget, should be altered to not look so similar. -- Yes, there are bogus decisions. PCalc is a good example. But there are also plenty of valid rejections too (many orders of magnitude more). And it's a mistake to think that every publicized rejection is invalid.

awolf 12y ago
Uh, fine. Sure, some of the rejections may be appropriate. But the situation with Drafts and PCalc are still very valid examples of problems with Apple's policies.
- eridius 12y ago
  I updated my post with a note at the bottom already. And two examples, one of which is actually not clear-cut at all (I don't agree that the Drafts case is actually necessarily an invalid rejection) and the other of which got reversed almost immediately, doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. Do you know how many apps get reviewed every single day? And how many of those get validly rejected, for reasons that nobody here would possibly disagree with? I think the answer is probably higher than you expect. I would love it if cases like PCalc never even happened. But I'm willing to accept that sometimes bad decisions happen, and we have to do our best to see that it gets fixed. Edit: To clarify on Drafts, I definitely think that they need to be consistent with their policies, though that can be very hard when you have lots of different reviewers reviewing apps, as they may interpret policies differently, or simply be more or less diligent about enforcing them. But Apple has always said that the notification center is intended for information display, and it follows that having a bunch of apps use widgets that provide buttons to launch the app is in violation of the intention of the notification center. Apple should be consistent here, but I would not fault them for choosing to tell all apps (such as Evernote) that they need to remove similar buttons, rather than allowing Drafts to keep its button.
milen 12y ago
> Wait, that app had a fake keyboard inside a notification center widget? That's truly awful and roundly deserved to get rejected. While the tastefulness of that solution might be questionable, I believe users should be able to decide for themselves whether it's acceptable or not. Of course, this is Apple's turf and they can make any decisions they like. Note that lots of users quite liked Neato - should we be making decisions for them? The real question is: where do we draw the line? Different people will have different opinions but I think most people would agree that the Panic situation, Drafts getting asked to remove their widget while others had the exact same functionality is not acceptable. The examples I listed demonstrate a problem that's endemic on the App Store - while we might disagree on particular rejections, it's quite obvious there are issues. With regards to the sandboxing issue on the MAS, it's relevant because Apple are themselves exempt from the restriction to ship sandboxed apps - this is hypocritical. Moreover, it objectively leads to a worse experience for customers, which I feel is against both Apple's and developers objectives. It's an example how the MAS effectively cripples 3rd party apps without leaving them a choice, while 1st party apps enjoy special privileges. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong in Apple making the rules - it's their platform after all but developers need to be aware what they sign up for when they decide to distribute their software on the MAS. --- Responding to your updated post: > ... But there are also plenty of valid rejections too (many orders of magnitude more). And it's a mistake to think that every publicized rejection is invalid. Of course, I totally agree with you. I don't think anyone is arguing that every publicised rejection is invalid - I was trying to make the point that we're seeing increasingly questionable rejections that a lot of people would agree are hurting the platform itself.

by eridius 12y ago

awolf 12y ago

Uh, fine. Sure, some of the rejections may be appropriate. But the situation with Drafts and PCalc are still very valid examples of problems with Apple's policies.

eridius 12y ago
I updated my post with a note at the bottom already. And two examples, one of which is actually not clear-cut at all (I don't agree that the Drafts case is actually necessarily an invalid rejection) and the other of which got reversed almost immediately, doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. Do you know how many apps get reviewed every single day? And how many of those get validly rejected, for reasons that nobody here would possibly disagree with? I think the answer is probably higher than you expect. I would love it if cases like PCalc never even happened. But I'm willing to accept that sometimes bad decisions happen, and we have to do our best to see that it gets fixed. Edit: To clarify on Drafts, I definitely think that they need to be consistent with their policies, though that can be very hard when you have lots of different reviewers reviewing apps, as they may interpret policies differently, or simply be more or less diligent about enforcing them. But Apple has always said that the notification center is intended for information display, and it follows that having a bunch of apps use widgets that provide buttons to launch the app is in violation of the intention of the notification center. Apple should be consistent here, but I would not fault them for choosing to tell all apps (such as Evernote) that they need to remove similar buttons, rather than allowing Drafts to keep its button.

milen 12y ago

> Wait, that app had a fake keyboard inside a notification center widget? That's truly awful and roundly deserved to get rejected. While the tastefulness of that solution might be questionable, I believe users should be able to decide for themselves whether it's acceptable or not. Of course, this is Apple's turf and they can make any decisions they like. Note that lots of users quite liked Neato - should we be making decisions for them? The real question is: where do we draw the line? Different people will have different opinions but I think most people would agree that the Panic situation, Drafts getting asked to remove their widget while others had the exact same functionality is not acceptable. The examples I listed demonstrate a problem that's endemic on the App Store - while we might disagree on particular rejections, it's quite obvious there are issues. With regards to the sandboxing issue on the MAS, it's relevant because Apple are themselves exempt from the restriction to ship sandboxed apps - this is hypocritical. Moreover, it objectively leads to a worse experience for customers, which I feel is against both Apple's and developers objectives. It's an example how the MAS effectively cripples 3rd party apps without leaving them a choice, while 1st party apps enjoy special privileges. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong in Apple making the rules - it's their platform after all but developers need to be aware what they sign up for when they decide to distribute their software on the MAS. --- Responding to your updated post: > ... But there are also plenty of valid rejections too (many orders of magnitude more). And it's a mistake to think that every publicized rejection is invalid. Of course, I totally agree with you. I don't think anyone is arguing that every publicised rejection is invalid - I was trying to make the point that we're seeing increasingly questionable rejections that a lot of people would agree are hurting the platform itself.