

What's New in the Updated App Store License Agreement and New Review Guidelines - mudgemeister
http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/app_store_guidelines

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SeanLuke
> We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the
> line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll
> know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you
> cross it.

The proper quote, from Justice Potter Stevens, was:

> I shall not today attempt further to deﬁne the kinds of material I
> understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I
> could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But __I know it when I see it
> __, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

How do I know? Because by wild coincidence, I quote it on the first page of a
free book I wrote (<http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/metaheuristics/>).

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gokhan
On April:

 _"My opinion is that iPhone users will be well-served by this rule. The App
Store is not lacking for quantity of titles."_ (He's talking about 3.1.1)

[http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_...](http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331)

Today, he doesn't comment on 3.1.1 but says _"The existence of this document
is a very welcome change"_ regarding the rules document. I'd like to see some
comments on 3.1.1 as well.

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sz
So is an iPhone scripting environment now allowed?

~~~
CGamesPlay
Yes. For more commentary, see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675131>

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tomjen3
>This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result
in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.

In other words - you (still) can't use this list to see if your app will be
accepted. Only whether it will be rejected with certainty.

This isn't unexpected, but as long as apple works hard to make this the only
way to install your apps, it is still unacceptable.

~~~
jacquesm
I disagree with that, and I was very solidly on the other side when they had
their previous set of rules.

The list given here shows 'intent'. Now you can go and interpret it to the
letter as if it is a kind of legal document, but that's not the right way to
approach this, just as it isn't very clever to try to live by the letter of
the law but to ignore the spirit of it.

Apple has clearly set a bunch of rules here that indicate what is the desired
way you should develop your app and how you interpret these rules is up to
you. If you're going to do your best to squeak by the guidelines they're
warning you up front that they may amend the guidelines and ban your app
anyway, just in case you decide to go 'legal' on them.

Is's a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do.

I'm surprised at the magnitude of this about-face, anybody with a clear
conscience can take this list, self-validate their app and have a very good
idea of whether or not it is going to pass.

No doubt there will be smart asses that will try to abuse the fact that the
list is now published to find loopholes and Apple has pre-emptively closed
those.

All (or as far as I can see it) of the dealbreakers are gone and I would
imagine they're gone for good.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
I think DF was right in its analysis: These changes are likely coming straight
from Jobs. Perhaps it was Apple Legal dictating the rules and it just didn't
seem "human" enough. Perhaps Jobs wanted to unify the left and right hand to
know what both were doing. Maybe they're scared of the Probe.

Apple is showing here that it is one of the biggest small companies around.
The wording in the App store review guidelines reads like something out of an
up-and-coming Webapp startup run by a 20-something ne'er-do-well.

It's clear that Apple wants to get back to its "Designed by Apple in
California" jeans and mock-turtleneck 'tude. The draconian rules and BS were
antithetical to that. Hey, maybe the gyrating silhouettes will make their
comeback to replace disembodied hands in their commercials.

~~~
orangecat
Agreed, I'm very impressed with the changes to both the content and tone. For
me the annual charge to run my own code on my own hardware and the prohibition
on non-appstore distribution are still dealbreakers, but this will undoubtedly
keep many developers around who otherwise would have jumped ship. It will also
allow more apps to be ported to and from iOS, which is beneficial for
everyone.

~~~
danilocampos
Hey, don't knock the annual charge. If we have garbage in the App Store right
now, imagine the crap we'd see if Apple removed that particular bozo filter.

Still, it would not be out of line for a developer account to permit the
creation of only developer certificates/provisioning profiles, limited to five
devices a year or something, to suit personal noodling not destined for the
App Store.

