
Apple rolls out a new App Store developer site - sharp11
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/18/apple-rolls-out-a-new-app-store-developer-site-with-guides-and-videos-for-growing-app-businesses-2/
======
educar
[https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/)

OK, this is not going to be a popular opinion but this is terrible, harsh and
condescending language. Only apple can get away with this.

Phrases like 'think about the children', 'amateur hour', 'run to the press'
simply don't help. I know how to take care of my kids, thank you. And the
lesson I am giving them is not to get into walled gardens where someone else
controls what my children can see and do. Calling things amateur is sad - who
are they to decide? Let the market decide, don't decide for the market. Did
these guys see the airbnb video the other day where Brian said everyone said
the idea was totally stupid. 'Lasting entertainment', yeah right.

I don't know about you guys but this is as close to big brother speak as I
have seen.

(I don't own any apple product and never will because I cannot imagine buying
a device where I cannot install my own software without purchasing Apple
laptops. Seriously? This is progress?)

~~~
st3v3r
"Calling things amateur is sad - who are they to decide? Let the market
decide, don't decide for the market"

It's their market. That's who they are to decide. And they're right. Having a
bunch of crappy, shoddy apps hurts those who actually put time, effort, and
yes, money into apps with the hopes of making a return.

Seriously, by that token, any grocery store should be forced to carry my
shittily packaged and shitty tasting food.

"I don't know about you guys but this is as close to big brother speak as I
have seen."

No, it isn't. It's telling developers not to try and submit just any old crap
and hope it sticks. Quite frankly, Apple has plenty of developers and apps;
they can afford to be picky.

"(I don't own any apple product and never will because I cannot imagine buying
a device where I cannot install my own software without purchasing Apple
laptops. Seriously? This is progress?)"

Nobody cares.

~~~
educar
> Seriously, by that token, any grocery store should be forced to carry my
> shittily packaged and shitty tasting food.

If we had just 2 main grocery stores and each store acts in such an
authoritarian fashion, then it's the duty of the people in know how to educate
people about the situation. Over a course of 10 years, you will only get only
"chips" and "biscuits" approved by them because they decided what is good for
you. In fact, once biscuits becomes profitable enough, they will kick out
existing players and make their own since they control the market (and Apple
has much history of just merging existing products and calling it their own).

> Nobody cares.

Sure, if the above reality seems appealing to you, go ahead and not care. But
many of us do and we are doing our bit to change it.

~~~
st3v3r
The "nobody cares" part was directed at your chest thumping bravado of "I
Don't Have Apple Products", like you deserve some kind of cookie for saying
so.

------
mschuster91
Also, they have recently overhauled the Developer Member Center, which
instantly breaks all of the tutorials on the internet on how to set up that
certificate crap for push notifications, dev deploy and prod deploy.

Android is "obtain a key from GCM, then ionic build android (and distribute
the apk to whomever you want, as long as the target device has Play
Services)"... iOS is "okay, generate a CSR here, (insert 20 steps), still not
finished", and to make stuff worse it's a true PITA to debug push
notifications.

Apple's developer workflows suck, not to mention the ridiculous 100-test-
devices-per-account policy (huge company and all agencies are invited to their
account => huge chaos).

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "iOS is "okay, generate a CSR here, (insert 20 steps), still not finished""

A few years ago maybe. Now Xcode handles most of this stuff for you
automatically. There are still some situations when the member centre is
queried but for the most part Xcode seems generate everything you need when
you try to build & run for the first time.

~~~
tl
Xcode handles the simple case automatically and screws up everything else
making the "Fix Issues" button a bit of a gamble, honestly.

------
acrooks
Their guidelines page ([https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/)) has some pretty curt language.

Interesting how terse and forward they are here as compared to other Apple
docs. Reads as if a jaded reviewer wrote it :)

~~~
ikawe
>Apps or metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be
rejected

So if I have a cross platform messaging app, I can't say, "syncs with android
and Windows phone devices". Really?

>Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct
marketing of any kind

Ahem Lyft.

~~~
masklinn
> So if I have a cross platform messaging app, I can't say, "syncs with
> android and Windows phone devices". Really?

You can't say it in the application or its metadata (e.g. appstore listing),
no.

> Ahem Lyft.

Report them?

~~~
thisisdave
How? With a bad review, or some other method? I didn't see anything on the App
Store page, but I might have been looking in the wrong places.

------
sandstrom
They seem to have increased restrictions on purchases outside Apple's control
(section on 'Purchasing and currencies').

    
    
        Subscriptions Outside of an App
        
        Subscribers to magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video 
        and cloud storage services who were acquired outside of your app
        can read or play content through the app. However, you may not 
        provide external links in your app that allow users to purchase 
        subscriptions outside of the app.
    

Sure, they've created the OS, but this is starting to feel a bit like a troll
guarding a bridge, forcing every one to pay up to walk across.

~~~
jeff_tyrrill
This is not new. This was put in place in 2011. This is why the Kindle app
(for example) does not allow you to buy books in the app, and the Amazon app
can order physical goods but not downloads.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/09/apple-reverses-course-
on...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/09/apple-reverses-course-on-in-app-
subscriptions/)

------
unfamiliar
> Apps larger than 100MB in size will not download over cellular networks
> (this is automatically prohibited by the App Store)

I have a 10GB data plan, why is this still a thing?! At least give me an
option to turn it off buried deep in the settings somewhere. I wish we had
something like `defaults` on iOS.

~~~
mschuster91
> I have a 10GB data plan, why is this still a thing?!

Where are you living and holy fuck how much are you paying?

Not everyone lives in Finland, unfortunately. It's a small number of countries
where 100MB won't eat up like half your monthly data allowance and it's good
that Apple prevents morons with unneccessarily huge apps (FACEBOOK!!!) to
screw their customers.

~~~
mikestew
_Not everyone lives in Finland, unfortunately._

Finland? T-Mo in the U. S. (you know, the country that is _sooo_ much worse
than Europe when it comes to mobile?), two lines with combined 14Gb data,
$120/month. Not quite 10Gb per phone, but close enough for our use. We had the
unlimited data, but we didn't use enough to justify the extra $30/month.

~~~
skrause
Here in Germany it's more common to have 1 GB for $10 per month. So more or
less the same price you pay per GB, but not many people can justify paying
>$100 per month for a mobile plan. I also have to manage with 1 GB data per
month, simply because I don't have to pay more than maybe $10-15 per month.

~~~
mikestew
Keeping in mind that the $120 we pay includes unlimited text and voice calls.
We don't need the 14Gb, as we rarely go over 1Gb, but the difference is
minimal enough that I pay the difference from a cheaper plan "just in case".

------
cloudjacker
> If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If
> you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.

Except it does, until the US and EU Antitrust commissions make you guys stop
this shit.

~~~
coldtea
What "(anti)trust"? This is a single company.

~~~
cloudjacker
Their actions are anticompetitive towards developers and app publishers. These
are individuals and companies, both valid entities in an antitrust complaint.

~~~
coldtea
> _Their actions are anticompetitive towards developers and app publishers._

On their own marketplace. That they created themselves and can control as they
like, and which is not even a monopoly (though that's also legal to be).

Not on the overall market.

That's like saying a supermarket can't decide what they sell or not, and
whether they'll promote a particular product or not.

~~~
cloudjacker
Correct, and all of the app developers and users are agreeing to the contract.

This has absolutely zero bearing on the establishment upholding the conditions
of those contracts. Especially with said contract's arbitrary, vague and
opaque, enforcement.

You heard it hear first. App Stores are an antitrust violation waiting to
happen.

~~~
coldtea
That's not what antitrust laws are about.

See here: [https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Microsoft-punished-for-
violati...](https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Microsoft-punished-for-violating-
antitrust-laws-while-Apple-which-is-even-worse-now-is-not-punished)

~~~
cloudjacker
They engage in anticompetitive practices, the antitrust commissions will be
the ones to levy sanctions whether they are in line with case law or set their
own precedent.

~~~
coldtea
I don't think antitrust means what you think it means...

------
johansch
I'd say that so far, Apple has gotten a lot of good apps _in spite of their
App developer /app submission infrastructure_, rather than because of it. It's
basically been an obstacle rather than a help.

Is this a sign that their Jobsian approach to third-party developers is
changing?

~~~
joemi
I'm not going to argue that there aren't crap apps on Apple's app store, since
there definitely are, but if it were easier to let apps onto the appstore,
wouldn't there be even more crap apps? I doubt a loosening of restrictions
would mean a massive surge of quality apps. Sure, it might mean some good apps
that had been rejected or had avoided the appstore because of restrictions
could get on, but the number of those quality apps would be minuscule compared
to the crap app surge.

~~~
johansch
There's already insane amounts of crap apps in the Apple app store.

What Apple should build is robust quality app discovery, filtering out the
crap.

What I'm seeing at the moment (seven years after the launch of the app store )
is a software architecture that appears to rely on the app store submission
process being a guarantee of quality. What a joke...

------
capote
Their whole thing about sex in the second paragraph—anyone have any idea,
given this, why if I type "sex" in to the app store search I get a good amount
of apps blatantly about sex? First one is Sex Positions 3D.

~~~
bobwaycott
Guess they're wanting to either halt future apps of that kind, or have a
reason for removing them in the future.

~~~
megablast
They have had big clean outs before, where they removed lots of apps from the
store, when they were trying to clean up the image of the store.

------
sandstrom
Perhaps the URL should be updated to [https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/) (instead of techcrunch)

------
norswap
Shouldn't they improve the terrible mess that the app store is, instead of
"educating" developers?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I think a vague awareness has seeped through the walls of Cupertino now that
the App Store has turned into the software equivalent of grey goo.

I wouldn't be surprised to see an announcement of a big clear out at WWDC - if
not this year, then certainly next.

------
beeswax
Apple recently rejected a tvOS app of mine due to the 2.12 no long lasting
value item.

I sort of anticipated that and while for some users the amount of content and
long lastingness is sufficient in that build I think the features I had
initially planned for the first update will really make a better 1.0 with
appeal to more users.

When I first browsed the Apple TV app store I was really disappointed by the
vast amount of crap, so from a consumer's perspective I'm glad they started
taking their guidelines serious now.

------
gondo
no pictures of an apple fruit "3\. Variations, Takeoffs or Abbreviations: You
may not use an image of a real apple or other variation of the Apple logo for
any purpose. Third parties cannot use a variation,"
([http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-
property/guidelinesf...](http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-
property/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html))

------
bobwaycott
Pay to be promoted in search? Ugh. How about offer a portion of credits out of
the 30% cut to go toward search/category promotions. Or lower the cut taken.
Or offer a choice between the two, plus an additional means for buying ads.
But digging further into the 70% devs are pocketing before taxes? Lame. And
paid promotion seems like it's already going to make the App Store even more
awful for users and smaller developers.

~~~
dijit
30% sounds a lot, especially before tax.

but if we take a lesson from the games industry, we know that 30% is what
valve takes.. and what Sony/Microsoft takes.

Not to mention the up front cost of the verification (which is a significant
amount of money honestly, Apple's is minuscule by comparison).

But for that money Sony/Microsoft/Valve will not promote your product, they
will simply be available for the platform.

I'm not sure how the Play store works of course, but my point is that
marketing budget and release "tax" are separate.

------
apocalyptic0n3
Looks like only certain parts have been updated. The Certificates/Provisioning
section seems to be the same, login page remains the same, iTunes Connect
remains the same (which admittedly received a facelift last year).

