Knitrino Rejected From App Store
Knitrino, maker of an app by the same name that helps knitters navigate tricky projects and find unique patterns, recently signed on to support Epic Games, the North Carolina-based game and software developer behind Fortnite, in its lawsuit alleging Apple is violating antitrust laws and has a monopoly on the app ecosystem.
[…]
After a back and forth argument with Apple to get its knitting app on the store — and a realization that there weren’t many options if they didn’t make it on the digital marketplace — Knitrino signed on in support of Epic. Attorneys for Knitrino filed a legal brief in January alleging Apple’s policies drive up consumer costs, restrict innovation and reduce consumer choice.
“The knitters should get to decide,” said Andrea Cull, co-founder of Knitrino and a knitter herself. “The fact that Apple can say your waiting customers can’t have this, and there was nowhere else to go. To think you spent two years building something for it to never see the light of day.”
Via Kosta Eleftheriou:
Knitrino appealed Apple’s decision to its own review board. It was rejected in 19 minutes.
“The feeling that we had when we were going through this was like hitting a wall, but not being able to see the wall […] I don’t know how tall this wall is. I don’t know if I can walk a few miles that way and get around it. We were just feeling around in the dark.”
The irony here: the rejection seems to be for trying to supply physical goods as part of the fulfillment of an App Store purchase. For which Apple allows and instructs developers to use an external payment processor within their apps… the exact privilege Epic was suing for.
I don’t really understand what happened here. They should have known about the physical goods rule, but the app was eventually approved, and presumably Apple didn’t cave on that part. Yet the solution couldn’t have been just removing the physical goods because the article says:
After the first rejection, Knitrino made some technical changes and tried again. For the next several days, the founders went back and forth with Apple — making changes, reapplying and receiving what seemed like irrelevant portions of Apple’s policies pasted back in response.
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Knitrino did later get Apple’s approval, though the sisters aren’t clear what led to the reversed decision.
So they still don’t know what they did “wrong” and have no way of knowing whether a subsequent reviewer will decide that it should never have been approved.
Previously:
The article in Seattle Times doesn't say what the developers knew before starting to develop the app. It also doesn't say what the developers changed to get the app approved.
Also 10-17 $ is a ridiculous price for a single knitting pattern. Without the ability to import a pattern the app is trying to build a closed platform.