REJECTED: Grand Tour-3D (for a joke about money)
Add another to the list of “pedantic interpretation of the rules, with no regards to common sense” – Grand Tour 3D [
]:
The concern was with a statement about the “cost” of my app in the description as it might cause confusion in foreign markets
…
“Costs about $149,999,995.01 less then the Voyager probes.”
Personally, I believe there *is* rationale for rejecting this (although it’s pretty slim) – and if the author had INSTEAD said:
“Costs about $150,000,000 less then the Voyager probes.”
…then this rationale wouldn’t hold anyway.
Since they provided a figure that implied a precise cost ($4.99), that (arguably) makes it rejection-worthy.
On the other hand, for a non code-review, forcing the developer to re-submit the binary and go through the whole approval process again seems more than a little extreme. This change is one that you make in 10 seconds *on Apple’s own website* – in fact, the reviewer could have *fixed* this themself in less time than it took to tell the developer about it.
Why does Apple even care about explicit prices?
I’m not entirely sure on this, but I’ve always assumed it’s about differential pricing.
(This is a subject that the UK public tends to be well-aware of, although maybe not “well informed”. The mainstream press has been aggressively reporting on it for the last couple of decades, but I’m not sure how many other countries get similar coverage?)
Apple wants the opportunity to arbitrarily change the prices in different countries to take advantage of fluctuations in exchange rates and the health of local economies.
As I said, I’m not sure, but … since the app-authors get to *choose* the current price (in one country only – all the rest are set from that based on Apple’s criteria), it’s otherwise hard to see why “mentioning price” is a cause for rejection.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Maybe it’s been rejected because of the spelling error (”then” instead of “than”) in the phrase
November 29th, 2009 at 1:24 am
the reason for rejecting specific prices is actually pretty clear – even if this case is a bizarre one.
the same app will be
$0.99
£0.57
Euro x.xx
CHF Y.YY
so if you describe it as costing $0.99 in the description that is simply incorrect for all non-US users.
sure – it is approximately correct, but I think Apple made a good call here in asking developers not to write inaccurate prices, and rather let the users see the correct price in the currency they will pay in.
You’d object if you went into a store and the iPod said $99 on the packaging, but had a sticker for $113.25 (or at least you’d agree that it was confusing)
November 29th, 2009 at 3:09 am
It is in no way “incorrect” for non-US users, it’s simply “not relevant”. Every day millions and millions of things are priced in one currency but observed in others.
This was the case even before the Internet made interntional visibility on pricing so common. These days, arguably, it’s actually the norm.
I think the concern at Apple is more likely:
1. I price it at $0.99
2. Exchange rate means that’s currently £0.50
3. Apple charges £0.75 in the UK
4. 65 million UK customers get angry that Apple is profiteering on their absolute control over international pricing (Apple won’t allow you to buy in foreign currency – won’t even allow you to download *free* apps from any store except the one from your home country).
Now, you can agree or disagree with the idea that it’s morally unfair / “ought to be” illegal (as the UK press likes to claim) to do differential pricing like that, but I think it’s disingenuous to pretend that there’s any deeper reason behind it than maximizing Apple’s profits. (In contrast, Economists tend to love the idea, and support it to the hilt.)
November 30th, 2009 at 12:22 am
Would it have helped to have “less than” spelled correctly?
November 30th, 2009 at 4:23 am
[...] example, Grand Tour 3D, a Solar System simulator was rejected because of a joke about the [...]
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
You forget that the dollar is the currency of many countries, with varying exchange rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar
So $4.99 might be confusing in those countries. The author could have written “149,999,995.01 USD” to avoid confusion…