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This is the free market at work. If Apple doesn't provide a good developer experience - then developers will move to Android. If all the best apps are on Android (or get removed from iPhones) then users will move there and Apple will have to reconsider.

Apple does not have a monopoly - why treat them like they do?
 
I'm not sure how as an app reviewer, you're supposed to review an app, and be able to determine that it is a copy of one of the 1 million+ apps in the App Store. I mean, Apple put themselves in this situation, but I've never understood how people expect any store to 100% block copycat or scams apps.
Comparing to every one of the 1 million+ apps is obviously an awfully large hill to climb - but on the flip side, would it really hurt their own reviewers / review process to search their own list of the top 100 apps in the specified category?

When you have situations where the real app is pushed down to position 37 while the scam app is in the top 10, because something about the naming gets picked up more readily by a search, or because the scam app is lower priced than the real app... we hear of too many of these cases on MacRumors, that should be caught by Apple before they ever get published.
 
Take 10 seconds and search for "wallpaper app" and you will get 20 scam apps in the top listings. Literally the first result (Thanks to the scam of apple search ads) is a $7.99/week scam. $416 a year for iPhone wallpapers. Should that be allowed? Apple doesn't care because they are making $124 per user that this company scams.

App review polices the "good apps" and does nothing to the actual offenders.

EDIT: Also the first real result is another $7.99/week scam. Why is this a good thing for users, Apple apologists?
Based on the Congress Bill, Apple is a tough place here. If the iOS store is a relatively fair store and the "scam apps" follow the terms of the Apple store, can Apple legitimately decide that those particular apps are not allowed because the price that they charge is too high? The only fallback that Apple has to counter the Congressional Bill is that everyone has to abide by the rules and if they do, they can exist in the store.
 
But Apple will refuse to comment the issue, as always
That’s true but that’s also being professional. Apple has a responsibility to protect the confidentially of their interactions with customers and developers (developers are customers too since they pay to access Apple’s tools).

If the developer wants to make accusations about Apple in a public way that’s totally up to them. But the professional thing for Apple to do is to continue to work with the developer, not comment in a public forum.

It would only be appropriate to comment publicly in limited circumstances such as if the developer bought litigation proceedings against Apple.
 
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Believe me, I've gone through many App Store frustrations.

I've had an app approved for version 1.0.0. I submitted version 1.0.1 to fix a typo. All of the sudden App Store reviewer has a fundamental problem with how passwords are handled (client requested user's birthday to be the password which Apple didn't like). I had to spend an extra week migrating current users away from birthdays and create new UI to redo passwords. Our users were frustrated. Apple should have rejected version 1.0.0.

With that said, Apple deserves credit. For one, they reduced app review times from 5-7 days to just 24 hours at no cost to the developer. Apple did "throw a whole lot more resources" at the App Store process. Reviewing 100k apps per week is no easy task.
Sounds like the issue was that version 1.0.0 was approved, not that 1.0.1 wasn’t.
 
It makes sense if you think Apple would punish a critic by rejecting their Apps.

I'm sure Apple will tell you that they never retaliate against critics though.

Apple actually broke their own rules and allowed Epic to join back if they made changes to Fortnite. Epic refused.

So no, I don't believe that.

To say Apple punishes App Store critics by shutting their apps down would be a stupid move by Apple as it only gives ammo to those filing a lawsuit against Apple.
 
I believe I do. He's very clear he wants an open app store where he can ignore Apple's APIs and code whatever he wants.

So yes to sum up the article which I read in its entirety. He doesn't like Apples rules and wants a way to bypass them. He wants zero accountability for his code.
I think the thing that so many people that support third party stores don’t understand is the reason why Apple don’t allow unauthorised API’s.

If we ignore the potential security issues for a moment, if a developer uses an unauthorised API your apps will quite possibly break when future iOS updates are released. It means you’re stuck between staying on an old operating system with potential security flaws or updating but then your apps could stop working.

This is one part of why Android updates are such a mess and why the Android ecosystem is so fragmented. Not to mention the overall quality of apps isn’t up to the same standard.

That isn’t to say Apple is perfect. The developer is right about there being work to do make the App Store better. Clean up the scam stuff for starters. And taking into account Apple’s size perhaps offer 0 commission rather than 15% for small developers. I think that would please lots of people in the developer community.
 
And taking into account Apple’s size perhaps offer 0 commission rather than 15% for small developers. I think that would please lots of people in the developer community.
Pay developers 0% for their first app? For anyone who questions this, there was a similar philosophy in the early days of video games. So there is some degree of precedent.
 
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It's like they need a free-form text field in their app review database, where one reviewer can note, "yes, it would appear on the surface that feature X violates rule Y, but here's why we decided to allow it, because actually, thing Z, and we had a meeting about it (see this link)", and then the next reviewer who comes along when the next update is sent and read that instead of just saying, "oh, feature X violates rule Y - REJECTED!".

They need some way like this to not have every reviewer starting from scratch on every app (ever called a company for something and been transferred between five different employees and had to re-explain your situation to every one of them from scratch, including going over why thing X isn't actually the problem? - similar thing).
There is a free-form text field for this, it's called "Notes". Every reviewer at Apple looks at this since it is next to where we developers put information like the demo username/password or other information needed to review the app.

You can also attach videos and other files to this field, which is required when you are doing something with hardware that you can't send to Apple(e.g. an app that controls a physical robot).
 

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Its obvious few have dealt with apple and their review process. Ive had to pull an app for previous granted features a later reviewer decided against.
Luckily I can still distribute it.
They treat their developers FAR worse than any other customers.
 
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It feels like all the major issues Apple is currently going through is from their Apple Store people. Maybe they are all interpreting the policies a little different because they all lack an understanding of core English skills and/or the policies are so legally complex that it would take lawyer to understand it and Apple when on the cheap side and hired average joes.
(Trying to be funny, don’t think it is working)
 
Its obvious few have dealt with apple and their review process. Ive had to pull an app for previous granted features a later reviewer decided against.
Luckily I can still distribute it.
They treat their developers FAR worse than any other customers.
So you throw up a communist dictator as an avatar to prove your point . . .
 
I think giving employees the power to claim something is a copy cat app could cause legal ramifications if they are wrong.
So have a supervisor confirm that it's a copy cat app.

Let people flag apps for copycat purposes, and list the other app. For some things it's difficult, but it's really not hard to figure out when the game in question is using assets from Halo or Far Cry in their description.
 
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I believe I do. He's very clear he wants an open app store where he can ignore Apple's APIs and code whatever he wants.

So yes to sum up the article which I read in its entirety. He doesn't like Apples rules and wants a way to bypass them. He wants zero accountability for his code.
Oh dear - "he wants to ignore Apple's APIs" is a meaningless phrase which I'm afraid shows you don't know what you're talking about. APIs aren't App Store rules, they're code frameworks which (in this case) are built into iOS to allow developers to do things like add a custom keyboard. He's essentially saying the code that Apple provides to make a custom iOS keyboard isn't very good, and keeps changing. He doesn't want to use a "rogue API" as you said in your previous comment - I don't even know what that means lol.

The issue here is that once again, an app which Apple previously said doesn't break any rules, now magically breaks the rules - for a reason which they previously agreed with the developer was not valid. I am stunned (but not that surprised) that people on macrumors are defending Apple on this one.
 
This developers comments are about as professional as a child throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of Walmart because mommy won’t buy him a toy 🤦‍♂️
I know right!! It's just like those kids throwing tantrums who say things like "We tried reaching out to Apple a total of 9 times last week, with no success" and "Since 2014 keyboard APIs have been buggy, inconsistent, ever-changing, and broken - particularly when it comes to accessibility features like Direct Touch". So unprofessional 😡😡
 
I'm not sure how as an app reviewer, you're supposed to review an app, and be able to determine that it is a copy of one of the 1 million+ apps in the App Store. I mean, Apple put themselves in this situation, but I've never understood how people expect any store to 100% block copycat or scams apps.

In real life scam products are very easily dealt with. That’s because the seller is ultimately responsible for the products they sell and so bother to put some effort in.

If Apple had to play by the same rules and be held accountable for the products in their store they’d find their trillions of dollars very easily paid for some workers to make more than just a cursory glance at new apps.
 
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I know right!! It's just like those kids throwing tantrums who say things like "We tried reaching out to Apple a total of 9 times last week, with no success" and "Since 2014 keyboard APIs have been buggy, inconsistent, ever-changing, and broken - particularly when it comes to accessibility features like Direct Touch". So unprofessional 😡😡
What’s unprofessional is his public tantrum but I’m sure you know this. His well I can’t get Apple to do whatever so I’m just gonna pull the app yeah that’s it I’m gonna pull the app Yeah and now blind people won’t be able to type yeah I’ll show apple that
 
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