Apple's new App Store Review Guidelines

Hey guys, this Mac hasn't on with the video on some of the limitations that Apple is now putting on developers if they try to post their app.

So, as you know, Apple, when you submit that to the App Store, it takes a week or two to get approved, and they have to go through a whole process. They take your app, and some guy reviews it. If he finds a problem, he emails you, and you have to fix it. Or if there's no problem, it gets posted, and it's taking longer and longer to do this as more apps keep on coming in. They say they're working on their process and stuff, but it's actually getting slower.

So the thing they decided to do is make more guidelines because they're getting a ton of bogus apps, like iFart apps and stuff. They made a few guidelines, and I don't know if you agree with a few of them. I mean, I'm not Apple, so I don't know what's best for the App Store, but I don't like some of these.

So I'll just tell you what some of the limitations they're putting on developers are. Apps with Easter eggs, that is, hidden features that aren't in the description of the app that aren't supposed to be there, if an app has Easter eggs, it will get rejected. If an app copies any other app's idea, it may get rejected. Now this is interesting because, you know, they can't get rid of every duplicate app or something, but if you copy something like iFart, it'll get rejected. So that's sort of what they're doing with that: they're saying they can reject it if you steal someone's idea.

Apps that browse the web must use the Apple framework, basically for WebKit and the WebKit JavaScript engine, and that means that, you know, Opera, the browser on the iPhone, it's really great. It doesn't use WebKit at all; it's its own code and everything, and it's pretty fast. It's better than Safari for some things for fast browsing, but it doesn't work as well for some things. Now Apple is not letting you do that. They're not letting you make your own browser base; they're making you use their code, almost their framework.

Apps with any type of metadata that mention any other mobile platform will get rejected, and this was specifically concerning for me because I don’t know, in some apps, maybe they say make your phone look like an Android or something. I don’t know, but metadata makes me think of resources. So even if the resources launch in any other device, like the resources have a hidden thing or something, or a text file that says Android, they can get rejected, and that's pretty weird.

Apps that misspell Apple's product or use similar names to Apple's products will be rejected. This is interesting. I guess we spelled iPhone as "iFoany" or something; I don't get how it got rejected. Now, although one time I tried to say Mac in one of my apps, the Mac heads in one app and it got rejected, so I spelled it correctly, obviously. It's pretty frustrating; I don't know what their whole thing with that is.

Apps that mimic an iPod, like, you know, the icon with the real user interface, will be rejected. I don't know who would want that anyway. I think you should be able to make an app like that, absolutely.

Emulating different desktop environments will be rejected, and I'll get back to this in a second. And then they said if your user interface is complex or less than very good, it may be rejected, and they said that I'm quoting them. So that's a problem because a lot of apps on the App Store look terrible. I'm not saying any specifics, but some apps use Apple's default UI and stuff, and their UI doesn't look that good. Apple is just weeding those out; it's not the best again, and it's an opinion too. They're basing this off an opinion.

Apps that enable legal file sharing will be rejected. This was another interesting one that's quoted as well, because the Mac has its own app. Obviously, on our site, you can post files, and you can view them in the Mac heads alone. So I don't know what people are uploading; I don't really pay attention to it anymore, but you know that may be taken down or something and it's concerning.

And then they have said more stuff like, "We don't need any more fart apps." That's true; I agree with that, but I should still be able to make a fart app if I want, and I know about you. They said lots of serious developers who don't want their quality apps to be surrounded by amateur apps, and if you ask me, that's true. But amateurs should still get some credit because there are some 15-year-olds out there who might not know code very well that are making apps, and they might make some good apps. They might have good ideas, so we should listen to them and let them come up with their ideas.

Although it is frustrating when some 15-year-old hits the top 10 on the store with his cheesy baby cocos2d or something. Not that I'm trying to hate on any of you in case you're one of those.

Anyway, so back to the desktop environment, humble and emulation sort of. Making an app that looks like an OS or like a GUI, a UI, I think that banning that kind of stuff is a problem because a while ago, my kids and I made our own app that we were working on. We never posted it to the App Store because the first one had a glitch; we removed it, blue sailed, and they wouldn't accept it anyway. It was a big story, and it's just taking forever, and now we'll never get on the App Store.

What it does is it emulates a desk, so you have a desk; you can put items on the desk, and the items can do different things. So here's a little demo: you can go to settings and check out the settings for it, and you can set the desk type, all this stuff.

I'll just show you what it does. So let's just do a little demo of this here. You can open it up; you have a picture frame. I already put this in here. We can go ahead and click it; we can go to my saved photos. Sorry that the simulator is tilted; I'm not going to bother to open the back. You can just turn your head.

I'll click a photo, and now the photo's in the photo album, and we can even drag it out, and we can die. There are tons of tools; we got our computer. This is like a web browser. I go ahead and go here; it's a simple environment.

We're planning on adding more stuff, but we decided not to. It was sort of at the end; it got kind of boring and, you know, stuff like that.

So, this is useless; the things at the top don't do anything, so we made this emulation app that emulates a desktop sort of, and I was thinking, well, we can post this, and people might want to use it and just mess around and stuff. It might be free; it might have in-app purchases; I don't know.

And anyway, it even saves everything you put on. If you put on a piece of paper, you can put text in it, stuff like that. I used to use this app and do stuff with it. So I don't know; I worked hard on this app, and now Apple’s saying they won't accept it because it's a desk emulator.

So it sort of just worked down the drain. I worked on this for like a week back when I was learning iPhone development. It was like one of my first apps that I made just using Apple's normal frameworks, and I spent a lot of time on it, and now Apple is saying they won’t accept it.

So, give me your thoughts on Apple's new review process. I might have a link in the description to Engadget's article on it. Anyway, thanks for watching Mac Ed's alone. Subscribe and about.