What’s App-Rejections all about?
[EDIT: Since a lot of sites have selectively quoted from this page, a brief clarification: I don't resent Apple for any of this, and I understand that it's not easy being in their position - I just believe they could have done better, and can still do much better. I believe we, collectively, (Apple + the iPhone dev community) can do a lot more. This is my own small step to get things improving...]
I’ve been an iPhone developer since late 2008.
There are now > 100,000 iPhone applications available on the App Store. However, Apple has a secret, undocumented, unquestionable, random process for deciding which applications to “allow” onto the deck.
Ever since I started, people have cried “FOUL!” when they’ve been rejected by Apple for reasons that – in the developer’s mind – were unfair.
However, in most cases, the rejections were perfectly reasonable, and/or Apple had officially warned developers “don’t do this; we won’t allow it”.
In late 2009, things changed (I’ll write more about this later). Google cried “FOUL!” and triggered an FCC investigation of Apple and AT&T’s business practices over a rejected app. The invisible submission process changed radically shortly after – and in particular the number of truly “unfair” rejections soared.
It’s now gone from “easy” to “tricky” to avoid having your App rejected by Apple.
Since Apple point-blank refuses to document the criteria – or even to discuss the matter on anything except a case-by-case basis – I decided to collate all the known examples of rejected Apps. And so this site was born…
Read it for fun. Read it to find out the cutting edges of iPhone dev that other developers are riding along. Read it to find out what you can (and can’t!) get away with. Show it to clients who ask too much, as evidence that you’re not being difficult – their app really will get rejected if you add the features they’re demanding!
Adam
November 15th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eve Penford-Dennis, Richard Brown. Richard Brown said: Apple App rejection blog listing what/hows to approval – http://is.gd/4VD9m [...]
November 20th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by peenydeeny: Looking forward to seeing what pops up on @redglassesapps site, http://apprejections.com/?p=5. interesting to see what doesn’t get through!…
November 26th, 2009 at 5:55 am
How much would you charge for advertisment on your site?
Regards,
Ajan kanaga
November 26th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
@Ajan
Sorry – I’m not interested in monetizing this site. Thanks anyway.
November 26th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
[...] AppRejections.com, created by UK-based iPhone developer Adam Martin, has set out to catalogue iTunes App Store rejections he considers “unusual” and “unfair”. [...]
November 26th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
[...] the site’s mission statement, in part: In late 2009, things changed (I’ll write more about this later). Google cried [...]
November 26th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
[...] he feels that Apple “has a secret, undocumented, unquestionable, random process for deciding which [...]
November 27th, 2009 at 12:07 am
[...] the site’s mission statement, in part: In late 2009, things changed (I’ll write more about this later). Google cried [...]
November 27th, 2009 at 9:12 am
very nice idea adam
November 28th, 2009 at 1:24 am
[...] As Martin explains on the site, “Since Apple point-blank refuses to document the criteria — or even discuss the matter on anything except a case-by-case basis — I decided to collate all the known examples of rejected apps. And so this site was born.” [...]
November 28th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
[...] As Martin explains on the site, “Since Apple point-blank refuses to document the criteria — or even discuss the matter on anything except a case-by-case basis — I decided to collate all the known examples of rejected apps. And so this site was born.” The site encourages readers to send app rejection news to Martin’s Twitter account, @redglassesapps. For now, there are only 2 pages of rejection notices on the sparsely-designed site, but as word about it spreads, that number should balloon accordingly. [...]
November 28th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I have an app that was rejected, which I was fine with until I found an application that did something similar that was, according to Apple, a universal policy that couldn’t be done within an app.
I don’t use Twitter so I was hoping you could shoot me an email.
November 29th, 2009 at 1:38 am
You really should include a link to the dev-team site and to the BigBoss repo. Just because your app was rejected doesn’t mean you cant sell it (or publish it for free) on cydia. There are 10million jailbroken phones out there, its not a market to ignore. You should really go ahead and encourage developers to offer their rejected apps on the Cydia store until Apple accepts them back…its time to fight back against Apple’s monopoly and the only competitor is Saurik.
November 29th, 2009 at 1:48 am
[...] What’s App Rejections all about? [...]
November 29th, 2009 at 3:18 am
@pavja
Interesting idea.
While I’m happy to critique Apple’s activities, I’m not keen to promote actions that are actively destructive or illegal (leaving aside the question of whether they ought to be), and there’s enough grey areas there to make me cautious.
I would much rather work with Apple than against them. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll all have to consider our options – but I think there are lots of things we haven’t even tried doing yet. It’s worth giving some of them a chance.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
[...] dass er mit dem Blog seinen kleinen Teil dazu beitragen möchte, dass der Entwicklungsprozess einer iPhone-App in Zukunft problemloser funktioniert. Die gesamte Community – bestehend aus Entwicklern, Nutzern und Apple selbst [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Hey,
I really appreciate you getting this site together, as I am interested in working on developing an iphone app. It would be a big help if I could read the entire article on the main page instead of reading just the first part and having to click through to get the rest.
I spend a lot of time in staying in hotels with so-so internet and using wifi at coffee shops(not to mention the fact that I am a bit ADD), but I am still interested in your site.
Thanks.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
@Tyler
Hmm. Interesting problem there. Doesn’t make a difference to me either way – there’s no ads on here
.
If I let the full article appear on front page, then you’re forced to download articles you’re not interested in, which could make things even worse for you. That front page will alos be a lot longer, because Wordpress paginates by “number of items” not “total number of words”. That could make the front page download VERY slowly for a lot of people.
(when the site gets a lot of surprise traffic, it works better with a small front page – the bigger the front page, the more the site slows down under load. Not a huge difference, but enough to be noticeable)
I can see that if you’re sure you want to read every article, then one mega download is best.
Have you tried getting a free RSS reader? That should be the fastest + most efficient way to read on a slow connection.