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• My first stupid app rejection

  July 23, 2009 at 18:09:57 CEST

  I've had some app rejections, most of them due to crashes. Lately, Apple has been improving this type of rejections a lot, since now they give you all the details to reproduce the bug and attach the crashlogs to the rejection email. Kudos to them.

  However, it seems they're now getting too picky about the app ratings and, at the same time, I'm getting bothered with that (and I guess I'm not the only one).

  One of my free apps, WikiAround, lets you find Wikipedia articles geotagged around you. It's been in the app store since May and it's always been rated 4+, because it doesn't give you open access to Wikipedia, only to geotagged articles. However, when I submitted the last update (which only adds the feature to set your position manually, as requested by some users) it got rejected for giving open access to Wikipedia without being tagged as 17+. The funny thing is I can find like 20+ apps which give you open access to Wikipedia and absolutely all of them are rated as 4+.

  Definitely, Apple needs to start enforcing the rules for all the apps, or not enforcing some of them at all, like they do with splash screens. If you're permissive with some developers while being picky with others, that has a name: discrimination.

  P.S.: If you're going to leave a comment telling me this is only my fault for developing for a closed platform blah blah blah blah, please refrain from it. I know the App Store rules and I've accepted them, I'm ranting about Apple not applying the rules equally for all the developers.

  Tags:

  • cocoa
  • iphone

1 comment for "My first stupid app rejection"

• #1 Comment by Nathan July 29, 2009 at 01:28:09 CEST ( Permalink )

  ----
  The funny thing is I can find like 20+ apps which give you open access to Wikipedia and absolutely all of them are rated as 4+.
  ----

  Are those apps that were just updated? Apple is only enforcing their new ratings system on new submissions (including updates). For example, your app wasn't pulled because it wasn't 17+, but when you updated it Apple required you to change the rating. Same with the other apps, if they ever bother to update. Basically, they're grandfathered in.