New Site Catalogs Litany of App Store Rejections

Adam Martin - Game Developer/iPhone Consultant

An iPhone application developer has upped the ante on criticism of Apple’s App Store approval policies with apprejections.com, a website devoted to collating “all the known examples of rejected Apps.”

Adam Martin, CEO of UK-based Red Glasses, makers of three iPhone apps (and a software development start-up with a curiously thin web presence), created the site earlier this month to document and share all known examples of “what is actually rejected” from the App Store — and he pulls no punches in his critique of Apple’s process for deciding which apps and updates make it onto the iTunes App Store.

“Apple has a secret, undocumented, unquestionable, random process for deciding which applications to “allow” onto the deck,” claims Martin on the site. Ironically, his own BrainGame Summation (iTunes link) app had an update rejected this week for using a common workaround to bugs in the official Apple APIs; the worrkaround previously appeared to pose no approval problems but has apprently been the basis for several recent rejections.

“Apple point-blank refuses to document the criteria — or even to discuss the matter on anything except a case-by-case basis,” Martin writes, though he does allow that “in most cases, rejections [are] perfectly reasonable, and/or Apple had officially warned developers “don’t do this; we won’t allow it”.

But the site does take App Store gatekeepers to task for being, among other things, “unskilled staff [who] are given a technical tool (the secret static-analyer) [sic] which they don’t understand — but trust 100%, [causing them to] reject apps that haven’t done anything wrong, but which the tool (incorrectly) flags.”

Martin acknowledges that the fledgling site has only just gotten started, but writes that he’s “been following reports on app-rejection for over a year,” and aims to catalog everything unusual and unfair about the mysterious process for joining the 100,000 (and growing) iPhone apps available now on iTunes.

DON'T MISS
One Year Later, Disgruntled iPhone App Developer Still Disgruntled

It’s now gone from “easy” to “tricky” to avoid having your App rejected by Apple, according to Martin.

6 comments »

About the author

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

Posted in Apple, iPhone, iTunes, News |

Jake
In before the Apple apologetics.
Good on him.
KenseiDave
Yeah good on him. I love Apple products, don’t so much like the draconian Apple organisation.
They are now the Big Brother that forces people into conformity displayed on the big screen that they were fighting against all those years ago……
Oh well……
chano
Gimme a break. Just another wannabe tool who is making noise because he desperately needs the publicity. He acknowledges that Apple’s criteria are valid and necessary, and that the App Store is still in its infancy but complains anyway and sees nothing inconsistent in that attitude. Brits are second-rate coders imo. They are good at moaning though.
What did you do before the App Store Mr. Martin? Flip burgers?
At least Apple allows you to be a contender on the greatest App Store and on the most supportive and favourable terms too. You code and qualify your work. They give you a worldwide market with no selling, packaging, marketing, distribution, accounting …….. etc etc. You just need a bank account. And you whine. Now there’s gratitude for you. What more do you want? Lessons on writing qualifying code? There’s probably an App for that. There is certainly a ton of Apple-sponsored iPhone coding learning materials on iTunes U. Suddenly, even a total dork can make good money if he can code and has a good idea. To many, the App Store is the gift of a foot on the ladder to a dev future for the ones who just get on with it. Check the opinions of the successful devs and you will see.
As Steve would say: ‘What a bozo!’
Charli
why i do believe that a lot of the talk is just hyperbole, I do agree that perhaps some clearer instructions up front about what is and is not allowed (like Microsoft did over their store) is in order. and the tools need to be carefully defined and used in a way where they are scanning and highlighting things to be examined before judgement. not just, if it is the way it is happening, a flag means no.
also it seems like perhaps the traffic coming in is too much for the staff handling it. perhaps what they need is a division of labor system. groups for different things. 1 for brand new apps. 2 for updates of a previously approved app, 3 for resubmission of rejected apps and then if the tablet happens they could add a group for apps previously approved on the iphone/touch being revamped for the touch and so on
http://e.phemera@mac.com ephemera
synopsis of the article above:
Whaaaaaa, whaaaaa, whaaaaaaaaa, hiccup, whaaaa, whaaaaa, whaaaaa, zzz….
http://tossr.com/ Stu
You know what? chano and ephemera are absolutely right; the App Store approvals procedure definitely ISN’T inconsistent, and anyone who says otherwise is clearly just an ungrateful whiner (and quite possibly a second-rate British coder, who probably has wonky teeth and talks like a character straight from the pages of PG Wodehouse) who should be happy that Apple’s testers even deigned to review their code, and who CERTAINLY shouldn’t dare complain that their app was rejected on spurious grounds, or that other apps were approved despite committing the same transgressions that caused their own app to be rejected.