Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

http://www.buzzwordcompliant.net/2011/05/10/apple-app-approval-tips-nobody-told-me-about/

by michaelbuckbee • 15 years ago

139 38 15 years ago

lotusleaf1987• 15 years ago

Summary: Be proactive and do as much work as you can to provide evidence on your own behalf, don't expect them to do the work for you.

petervandijck• 15 years ago

Sounds like tips for getting hired :)

michaelbuckbee• 15 years ago

That's a reasonable summary. From looking at my server logs I can tell that they only spend a few minutes using the application during the approval process, so it is vitally important that you tee up as much information as possible for them.

gte910h5• 15 years ago

You can actually call up the developer relations people and find out if anything is particularly troubling they can think of before you go through an expensive dev phase.

Their comments aren't binding (or even something I'd reference), and the approval criteria is constantly evolving, but they're pretty good at pointing out concerns from a 30 second description of the app.

This is good to do if you're doing something you think may get you in trouble, but think it won't necessarily do so. They've been very helpful in the past about their criteria for the different GPS APIs etc.

palish• 15 years ago

What's their phone number?

icey2• 15 years ago

Let me google that for you:

http://developer.apple.com/contact/phone.html

Literally the first result when searching for "apple developer support phone number".

gte910h5• 15 years ago

1 (408) 996-1010, ask for developer relations.

adnam• 15 years ago

This is ridiculous! Why not offer fellatio and be done with it.

r00fus• 15 years ago

The tip about some previous hackernews apps being rejected for the word "Hacker" sounds like it might be best to describe Hacker News as just news.ycombinator.com "YCombinator is a startup incubator...".

gabrielroth2• 15 years ago

You might want to put 'Hacker News' in the app's title, though.

BenSS• 15 years ago

Interesting, I didn't have trouble getting my hacker news app accepted at all. Never thought the name would be an issue.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

There has to be some middle ground between Apple's style and Google's style. Apple overdoes their control a bit, and Google doesn't exercise enough control. You shouldn't have to make an anonymous reviewer think about puppies to get your app passed. I'd just like an app market where Apps are guaranteed to not be privacy violators, trojans, or capable of damaging my hardware.

Steko• 15 years ago

"There has to be some middle ground between Apple's style and Google's style." Isn't Apple's approach actually the middle ground? Traditionally when you bought software in a store you were looking at quite a bit more curation then Apple does now.

"You shouldn't have to make an anonymous reviewer think about puppies to get your app passed." You don't. I guess it could help if your app was in a gray area but I don't see it helping that much.

"I'd just like an app market where Apps are guaranteed to not be privacy violators, trojans, or capable of damaging my hardware." While we're going all wishlist let's go scammer free and get an astroturf resistant rating system with much higher discoverability.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

I'm specifically saying middle ground between Apple and Google's styles, though. Traditional software publishing is obsolete and we don't really need to worry about how that worked.

As for thinking about puppies, my point is that the 'human factor' in Apple's review process seems to count for too much. It should be cut and dry: it is legal, does what it claims and does nothing behind your back, and has no trojans.

blub• 15 years ago

There is: Nokia's Ovi store. Unfortunately, Symbian isn't doing that great compared to Android and iOS, at least in the minds of tech influencers.

zbowling• 15 years ago

I would love to contribute to how to get accepted faster, but I honestly can't. I've followed all the rules the last couple years and really haven't been rejected when I've tried to get through. About 1-2 weeks each time for each app and update. Two years ago when the app store was new, I did test the rules and got rejected in static analysis pass but that was under my own personal user and for obvious stuff.

I really don't know what it takes to get rejected on top of the already existing ground rules they spell out on their site. Apple really hasn't given me any trouble at all (except emailing after accepting to change a little artwork to clean up an icon next pass).

Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

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