logoalt Hacker News

Jonovonoyesterday at 8:26 PM2 repliesview on HN

Somewhat, but still very subjective. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spa...

You can still always get around them (at least my experience), but it just takes a lot of time


Replies

mortenjorckyesterday at 10:04 PM

Look up "wireless printing" in the App Store sometime. As best I can tell, one or two actors have spammed the entire category with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of subscription-heavy repackagings of CUPS drivers as iOS apps. They all have very similar blue line-art icons of a printer, similar preview images with similar typography, and are all crammed full of subscription options.

They are probably making a killing on people who forgot about or can't figure out how to cancel the $4.99/week subscription on the top 20-30 of these apps.

All this while of course the one app you've been working on for a year will be held up with multiple rounds of rejections weeks apart. For all the good Cook has done in his 15 years at Apple, the App Store will be the one real stain on his legacy, and I hope Ternus is as acutely cognizant of that as the developer community is.

show 1 reply
dgellowyesterday at 9:14 PM

The guideline:

(b) Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store. Repeated submissions of this kind may lead to removal from the Apple Developer Program.

show 1 reply