Poor App Rejection Communication
Stammy (February 2022, via Matthew Bischoff):
Want to learn iOS dev & build your first, simple app? Don’t. Apple will just call it spam.
App Store called @StocketaApp spam (was going through testflight review)
The App Store called me on the phone 🤯🙏
They said the wording in this notice was unhelpful as the issue was not actually design related.
The real issue stemmed from how I was migrating to an Individual Dev account from a Business acct & there were temporarily 2 Stocketa apps
Just imagine if you didn’t have 50k followers though.
Been writing Mac apps since ’94.
In 2019, Apple called me a spammer, while trying to launch a v2 product.
They pushed me to adopt IAP & combine several apps into one, replacing an existing app with this new bundled version.
Never again, two years of life wasted.
Nothing bugs me more about app review than the language they use during rejections. Almost never clear. 9 times out of 10, it’s just a cut and paste from the guidelines with no further explanation.
The 30% gets so much focus, but this is the real problem with the App Store. Until Apple allows alternate means of distribution, they shouldn’t reject any apps except for malware/scams. Who cares if only 10 people find it useful, or it’s the 100th entry in a crowded category?
Previously:
- Mastodon Client Rejections
- Sketchy ChatGPT App Soars Up App Store Charts
- Apps That Can’t Be Transferred
- Getting Feedback to Apple
I have many gripes with the AppStore and app review. A minor one is the weaselly language of the rejection email. The mail subject is “We noticed an issue with your submission.” It implies that Apple are passive observers in the process and they’re doing you a favour by pointing it out rather than acknowledging that they are exercising their complete power. George Carlin would have a problem with their “issue” too. A more direct and subject could be “we found a problem with your submission”.