{"id":3822,"date":"2011-09-28T17:45:40","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T21:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=3822"},"modified":"2026-04-21T10:02:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T14:02:43","slug":"drift-rejected-from-the-app-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/28\/drift-rejected-from-the-app-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Drift Rejected From the App Store"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/generalspecificity.com\/2011\/09\/27\/apple-apps-appeals-and-appeasement.html\">Devin Chalmers<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/manton\/status\/119132779651940352\">Manton Reece<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/generalspecificity.com\/2011\/09\/27\/apple-apps-appeals-and-appeasement.html\"><p>Eventually it became clear that, from the reviewers' perspective, there was a problem with that, at all: it wasn't the (already redacted) signup links that we were being rejected for, but any GitHub link. At all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the situation that I <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/21\/readability-ios-app-rejected\/\">outlined in February<\/a>, with a third-party client for a service. It&rsquo;s OK to make a Twitter client because Twitter is free, but GitHub has both free and paid plans, so you can&rsquo;t make a GitHub app unless you support in-app purchase. And that&rsquo;s only possible for an app developed by GitHub itself, not for a third-party developer using its API.\n<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s a shame that Apple won&rsquo;t allow these apps to exist except in crippled form. And it&rsquo;s also a shame that they won&rsquo;t come out and say that that&rsquo;s their policy. The reviewers and appeals board tossed Chalmers around for two months, despite the fact that, as I linked to <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/22\/more-on-section-11\/\">here<\/a>, Steve Jobs himself said that the in-app purchase requirement was for content, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2011\/02\/21\/steve-jobs-email-suggests-in-app-subscriptions-dont-apply-to-software-as-a-service\/\">not software as a service (SaaS)<\/a>.\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devin Chalmers (via Manton Reece): Eventually it became clear that, from the reviewers' perspective, there was a problem with that, at all: it wasn't the (already redacted) signup links that we were being rejected for, but any GitHub link. At all. This is the situation that I outlined in February, with a third-party client for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-04-21T14:02:46Z","apple_news_api_id":"8dc7cb1a-bae7-4acd-b491-a82537e4d2e1","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-04-21T14:02:46Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AjcfLGrrnSs20kaglN-TS4Q","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[130],"class_list":["post-3822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-rejection"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3822"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51664,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822\/revisions\/51664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}