Negotiating Apple’s in-app purchase rules stalled one app for two months, even though it was similar to the company’s iPhone app which made it through the approval gauntlet in just a week.
The app in question, ShareFile, is a file-sharing and backup platform app. Users pay anywhere from $29.99 to $499 a month for the service, but the app is offered gratis.
While the iPhone version was given the OK in a week, the iPad edition languished in approval limbo for weeks before getting rejected for not incorporating the in-app purchase rules which entitle Apple to a 30 percent cut of revenue.
CEO Jesse Lipson told Information Week in a detailed article recounting his app approval saga he was “blindsided” by the objection, since the company’s previous experience with Apple had been so fast and simple.
“It was a very big surprise to us. We were totally shocked,” Lipson said. “We were also disappointed that they took so long to get back to us.”
Lipson decided to appeal the decision. Fortunately for the 70-person startup, Apple decided that while it would rather ShareFile implement IAP, it could be in the store without it, as long as every link to sign up for a trial subscription on ShareFile’s site was removed.
In comparison, the ShareFile Android app took half an hour to make it to the store.
“It will certainly be nice if [Apple] starts having a little bit less power and a smaller market share, and they have to start falling in line with what the other guys are doing,” Lipson said.
Source: Information Week
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you’re doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
43 responses to “Developer “Blindsided” By Apple’s In-App Rules”
Are you guys having a laugh? If you break the rules, your app won’t be submitted. Why will people not get that through their thick skulls. It doesn’t matter how long anything takes. These guys are just pissed because apple want a share. Grow up!
Whaaaa freaking waaaaaaaa….
How does the developer claim to have been blindsided by the rules? They agree to them all the time and this particular requirement has been in the news for many months now. Sounds like a case of someone complaining…
I just paid $22.87 for an iPad2-64GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $675 which only cost me $62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, http://to.ly/aQrp
Wah! Give Baby a bottle!
“It will certainly be nice if [Apple] starts having a little bit less power and a smaller market share, and they have to start falling in line with what the other guys are doing,” Lipson said.I am sorry but the reason I like iOS is because the apps are properly vetted and careful about the crap that gets in.. Sure we get some crap apps but hey a ton less than Android, that has tons of fake apps and Malware. Don’t like the rules take your ball to another court.
How does a grown-up, running their own company not know how to read the rules another company has implemented so that you can use their product legally?? Sounds pretty childish to me. All of these low-level developers always think they can use the media to force Apple to bend to their will. Good luck! Then this GOOF has the nerve to say “he hopes Apple loses some of their market-share, so they have less control?!!?!” What a douche!
Yep.
Also, the comments about the iPhone version make it sound like it was submitted at the same time, but was that the case. Or was it weeks ago before enforcement began and they just haven’t been ‘caught’ yet
Won’t work anyway. Apple doesn’t make decisions based on marketshare. They do what they want no matter what anyone else says
I agree with you.
It’s like the early days when Apple had to let a certain number of apps through without rigorous checking just to get apps through. Then they obviously run audits on some kind of schedule to catch any that snuck through.Govt. departments and other businesses do similar things all the time. The same as a tax audit. Most go through but some get singled out for closer inspection.Makes for great publicity when you complain to a high profile news website though…
For the developer: rif.org
I work at ShareFile with Jesse Lipson. I encourage everyone to read the full article on InformationWeek (http://www.informationweek.com… to get a better understanding of the actual issues our company faced.
Please let me know if you have any questions and I’d be happy to answer them.
“We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps.” -Steve Jobs, February 2011
Reference: http://pulse2.com/2011/02/22/s…
That, combined with the approval a few months before of our iPhone app and
the approval of our competitors’ apps without IAP led to some confusion about
whether it applied to us.
The review board did find in our favor, so they agreed that IAP did not need to apply
to our app. Our app has already been approved so we weren’t complaining or
trying to get anything from Apple. We just wanted to share our experiences for
other developers to navigate the process.
I do agree with the comment above that the approval process has some big
advantages over other app markets, but it’s not a perfect process and can
always be improved. As we mentioned in the article, we would have been happy
to pay a fee for an expedited review of the app.
While it does give a bit more information, it still comes across that ShareFile tried to skirt around Apple’s much publicized rules against linking to external subscriptions – Amazon, Google and others all had to change their apps in the same way so it really shouldn’t have been surprisingly.
The delay of getting through the app store process does continue to be a probem that Apple must work on improving.
This quote was not taken out of context and is just asinine though:
“It will certainly be nice if [Apple] starts having a little bit less power and a smaller market share, and they have to start falling in line with what the other guys are doing,” Lipson said.
Honestly if this is what y’all want, you might want to stay out of Apple’s sandbox. You can’t want to be on the iOS devices because of their market share _and_ complain about that marketshare in the same breadth.
Thanks for the comments. We appreciate the feedback.
Our CEO references this comment by Steve Jobs http://pulse2.com/2011/02/22/s…
SBMobile, IAP has been confusing to a lot of developers.
Steve Jobs own guidance was that IAP does not apply to SaaS apps: “”We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps.”
Reference: http://pulse2.com/2011/02/22/s…
The review board found in our favor, and our app is already live so we were certainly not trying to bend Apple to our will.
I realize you are a probably a pretty big Apple fan, but once you start mocking opposing
viewpoints without critical thought, then it really does become the “cult of mac” ;)
The App Store is good, but it’s not perfect.
So the real issue is you have deemed that your app is SaaS and the Apple reviewers disagree.
At the time that the iphone version was approved, this perhaps not an issue that had to be debated. Thus that version sailed through. This time, the rule is in place and required more discussion. Which you don’t like.
But regardless of this your ‘lose marketshare’ comment was still less than sound due to the fact that Apple doesn’t do anything by market share, particularly in terms of controlling what goes in the app store. Just makes you come off as a whiner who hasn’t done his homework. Even if your ipad app is approved in appeal, some folks won’t want to do business with someone like that.
Fair point regarding market share, Lucas. I’m not an expert on Apple’s business philosophy so I guess my assumption that they would change based on the market is probably not right. I own some of Apple products, and I also own Windows products.
If I could restate it a bit better, right now Apple has such a large market share that going through their App Store is a “must do” for a SaaS company like us. If the market share were more evenly divided, it would be a viable option to choose not to participate in the store. Like if Blackberry imposed these same rules, we simply wouldn’t build a Blackberry app. :)
There was no disagreement with the reviewers about whether we are a SaaS app. They were always clear that we are not a publishing app. The bottom line is that IAP rules are very vague, even to Apple’s reviewers. All app developers like us are still trying to navigate them. Hopefully the experience we shared will be helpful to some developers.
That’s because Apple is made up of scumbags. That’s why Android is the more popular mobile OS now and more developers are making apps for the Android platform.
http://bit.ly/dI3hcF
Apple HAS lost some of their market share. Android is burying Apple.
http://bit.ly/dI3hcF
Dan, you guys might want to stop caring about developing for Apple. Android is the wave of the future.
http://bit.ly/dI3hcF
I’ve had similar experiences with iPad versions of iPhone apps not being initially approved. But in my case, I refuted Apple’s rejections in the iTunesConnect Resolution Center and had the rejections overturned and then quickly approved. Moral of the story: Apple does listen to complaints if they’re well-informed, well-articulated, and support your customers’ needs.
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5