Apple Updates App Store Review Guidelines, Says Developers Can Now Appeal Over Perceived Unfair Treatment

[Cosmosent]

Who makes the Call on that ?

I.e., who decides whether some Marketing point is misleading OR NOT ?

Appears to be a Guideline that Apple can use whenever they like, regardless of the facts !

I don't like this one at all !

Apple wants to be Judge, Jury, & Executioner !

NOT as bad as I thought, I'm OK with it:

• 2.3.1 Don’t include any hidden, dormant, or undocumented features in your app; your app’s functionality should be clear to end users and App Review. All new features, functionality, and product changes must be described with specificity in the Notes for Review section of App Store Connect (generic descriptions will be rejected) and accessible for review. Similarly, marketing your app in a misleading way, such as by promoting content or services that it does not actually offer (e.g. iOS-based virus and malware scanners) or promoting a false price, whether within or outside of the App Store, is grounds for removal of your app from the App Store and termination of your developer account. Egregious or repeated behavior is grounds for removal from the Apple Developer Program. We work hard to make the App Store a trustworthy ecosystem and expect our app developers to follow suit; if you’re dishonest, we don’t want to do business with you.

 

[Cosmosent]

In addition, two updates have been made to the App Review contact form on Apple's website. First, developers who appeal an app rejection can now specify if they believe their app was rejected due to unfair treatment by the App Review team, including political bias or other forms of bias. Second, developers can now report other apps if they believe they present trust or safety concerns, or otherwise violate the App Store Review Guidelines.

1.) Will try to get my Timmy app, the ONLY per-Region, per-Qtr, per-Device "iPhone Unit Sales Estimator" App on the planet, RE-instated !

I believe AAPL removed it from the App Store based-upon "or other forms of bias".

Specifically, that Timmy's estimates got too close for Cook's comfort !

2.) Had been promoting the concept of "App Store Police," & while this is NOT what I expected, it's a good move in the right direction.

 

[HiRez]

I mean...can't FaceTime and Messages also be used "to facilitate prostitution", or "may include pornography"? And I'm pretty sure they have been. Not to mention things like Apple Cash and Venmo.

 

[alex2792]

How about appealing absurdly anticompetitive App Store policies?

 

[bobenhaus]

This is a really good move by Apple and one that should have been there from the start.

Yeah kind of weird at this time since the whole world is about to go ******* on $pple because of their business practices.

 

[brightonguy]

Apple will lose the Epic vs Apple case or a near future case with same arguments packaged differently. The more I read into these changes, the more I am convinced.

Competition is a beautiful thing.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Yeah kind of weird at this time since the whole world is about to go ******* on $pple because of their business practices.

I agree that with all that is going on, it looks like CYA action. I still think it is a good feature.

 

[symphony]

Zuckerberg wants to use that feature right away

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Updates regarding App Store policies are always so painful to read.

It's like Apple executives ask what the least they can do is, and then they decide, "Ok, lets do 10% of that."

It's just an enormous backhanded slap from Apple against humanity everytime. I'm looking forward to the judgement in Apple vs Epic - although Epic's lawyers seemed a bit clumsy, the judge seems to clearly see some of the problems that Epic's lawyers were beating around (and that 45% of current iOS developers clearly see, and most of the hundreds of thousands of former developers like myself clearly saw... all those abandoned apps didn't end up abandoned because we're lazy. It's because we were tired of Apple exploiting *our* work and using that to become the world's largest company while treating us and our customers like crap. WWDC is just marketing. It's a joke.)

 

[bodypartgo]

Does anyone have any insight into when these new guidelines will go into affect? Meaning, when will Apple start rejecting apps... Does it usually align with the release of the newly announced software versions? In this case iOS 15 (Fall). The account deletion one is huge and one that I know a lot of devs will be scrambling to address...

 

[sjsharksfan12]

Never mind. What I wrote had nothing to do with this article.

 

[FabioG]

"Added drinking game apps as a saturated category"

What exactly does this mean for Drinking Games?