{"id":27172,"date":"2019-11-04T14:22:28","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T19:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=27172"},"modified":"2019-12-17T19:30:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T00:30:07","slug":"electron-apps-rejected-from-the-mac-app-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/04\/electron-apps-rejected-from-the-mac-app-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Electron Apps Rejected From the Mac App Store"},"content":{"rendered":"

David.dev<\/a> (via Ben Sandofsky<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>, Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Allright, as a follow up to the previous chapter<\/a> in this odyssey I can now state that, apparently,  you cannot submit an electron 6 or 7 app to the apple store:<\/b><\/p>

The first refusal from apple states:<\/p>\n

Your app app links against the following non-public framework(s):
CAContext
CALayerHost
NSAccessibilityRemoteUIElement
NSNextStepFrame
NSThemeFrame
NSURLFileTypeMappings<\/blockquote>\n

I am not the only one having this issue<\/a> and I did write back to Apple trying to explain that I am using Electron and I can’t really change any of these public-framework usage (I assume is something from Chromium)[…]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Craig Hockenberry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

There was a time when digging into the bowels of the macOS implementation was “necessary”. Back in the day, you’d use NSThemeFrame<\/code> to get UI into an app’s titlebar.<\/p>\n

iTunes did it, so everyone wanted to do it.<\/p>\n

But those days are long gone - there are public APIs to get the job done now.<\/p>\n

And with the advent of Spaces, split-screen windows, and translucent effects, using these private APIs are likely to break an app.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Unfortunately, that isn’t the whole story. Some of the private APIs<\/a> are used in the Web rendering engine itself<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mozilla recently published a good write up<\/a> on why they started using the undocumented CALayer API in Firefox 69. The TLDR is that that these private API’s allowed them to get up to 3x better battery usage in Firefox. The article also mentioned that Chrome uses these Core Animation API’s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

So there are a multiple problems here:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It’s (apparently) impossible for Chromium to get competitive performance and battery life without using private API, which Safari freely uses<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. Apple probably has good reasons for keeping these APIs private.<\/li>\n
  3. Private API has always been banned, but Apple has been accepting these apps for years and then abruptly stopped without any notice.<\/li>\n
  4. Apps using Electron probably didn’t know that they were even using private API. Neither Xcode nor Application Loader reports this, and App Review was accepting the apps.<\/li>\n
  5. The rule is not being enforced equally.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n

    I just checked Slack, which was updated 3 days ago, and its embedded Electron Framework contains all of the listed private symbols.<\/p>\n

    “And developers, from first-time engineers to larger companies, can rest assured that everyone is playing by the same set of rules.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

    thomascgalvin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    This, however, is draconian:<\/p>

    Continuing to use or conceal non-public APIs in future submissions of this app may result in the termination of your Apple Developer account, as well as removal of all associated apps from the App Store.<\/p><\/blockquote>

    “Keep trying to submit, and we might just ban you forever” is insane. Every program of any complexity depends on third party libraries, and many people wouldn’t be able to tell what arcane APIs their dependencies (or their dependencies’ dependencies) call. “If you continue to have an upstream dependency that violates our terms, we might permaban you” is bullshit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

    Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n

    This has got to be a big problem for Apple. The widespread distribution of Electron and Chromium means they have to maintain this as semi-public API. Or risk breaking a lot of apps in a future OS release. Google is forcing them into a bad spot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

    Matt<\/a> Birchler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Good people of Twitter, what are your favorite Catalyst apps? Asking because I am yet to find one that is remotely as good as the Electron apps I use daily.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    I’ll be more specific: Slack and Visual Studio Code works great for me, while Postman is a little annoying, but very functional. Meanwhile the Jira and Twitter Catalyst apps have sent me running back for the web.<\/blockquote>\n\n

    Previously:<\/p>\n