

Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About - michaelbuckbee
http://www.buzzwordcompliant.net/2011/05/10/apple-app-approval-tips-nobody-told-me-about/

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gte910h
You can actually call up the developer relations people and find out if
anything is particularly troubling they can think of before you go through an
expensive dev phase.

Their comments aren't binding (or even something I'd reference), and the
approval criteria is constantly evolving, but they're pretty good at pointing
out concerns from a 30 second description of the app.

This is good to do if you're doing something you think may get you in trouble,
but think it won't necessarily do so. They've been very helpful in the past
about their criteria for the different GPS APIs etc.

~~~
palish
What's their phone number?

~~~
icey
Let me google that for you:

<http://developer.apple.com/contact/phone.html>

Literally the first result when searching for "apple developer support phone
number".

~~~
bittermang
And herin lies the problem of this attitude.

The original commentator posed a solution, "Call them" but no phone number.

The second commentator realized this gap, and asked, "What is the phone
number?" One could reasonably expand upon this, it certainty hasn't occurred
to me that you could call them and talk to them either. Do you need to be
enrolled? Is the number secret? Where is the number. Clearly the first
commentator must know this and more, as he is posing it as a solution. At the
very least, he must have the number, or know where to get the number.

You, the third commentator, come in with the Google Result. Obvious to some,
just Google it. Not obvious to others. If it wasn't obvious that you could
call them, it would be less obvious that the number is simply publicly
available. Further, search results can sometimes be inconclusive, and while
this one was the first result and directly on Apple.com, other queries are not
so obvious. Again, the first source clearly had the information, and he was
directly asked when he did not provide it.

That is why communities, question and answer sites, forums, Stack Overflow,
and everything else exist. Direct knowledge from people who are verified or
profess to having the information that you seek. Some people feel better about
direct conversations or direct answers from people vs. casting their fishing
hook out in to the giant open Internet and hoping they catch their answer.
Some people aren't any good at searching. Sometimes just asking someone who
knows can be quicker.

~~~
gnaritas
> Some people aren't any good at searching.

You don't need to be good to Google most things.

> Sometimes just asking someone who knows can be quicker.

Google knows the answer to most simple queries like this.

You shouldn't ask a question where the answer is trivially Googled; Google
first, then ask when you can't find the answer. The previous poster had the
right attitude by saying let me Google that for you, it's such a pervasive
problem that sites like <http://lmgtfy.com> have to exist to help educate lazy
people.

Yes, some people prefer to ask a human rather than Google; those people are
lazy and need to be educated, not pacified.

~~~
bittermang
> You shouldn't ask a question where the answer is trivially Googled.

So we're discouraging asking questions now? That's a troubling stance.

Google's general improvements at googling are making things easier to google.
But the world keeps inventing better idiots, and it is a cat and mouse game.
Which is not to say that anyone in this thread is an idiot; far from it. But
we must recognize that some people are inherently bad at search. Are they
intimidated? Are they inputting the wrong queries? Are they asking the right
things but unable to find what they're seeking in their results? There are
quite a lot of things that could go wrong with the search itself, before even
addressing the individual and how they seek and learn.

Some people learn by reading. Some people learn by listening. Some people
learn by doing. This is not a weakness or a laziness issue, this is a human
behavior issue. You're not pacifying people by giving them the information
they're seeking. We used to call that answering, because they asked a
question. If, as posed in this scenario, the first poser provided incomplete
information, and the second poster posted a question asking for clarification
or more details, I really fail to see how this is laziness that needs to be
pacified. That is a very negative view of someone who just wanted more
details.

The person was seeking education, they asked a question. Negativity and
arrogance on how it was so obvious and they should have just searched for it
are not helping educate anyone. They have the opposite effect: next time the
person may not even bother asking at all, now feeling alienated and perhaps
it's best to not try to learn at all. That doesn't help anyone. Not the
person, the community, you, or me. We are all left worse for it.

~~~
gabrielroth
> So we're discouraging asking questions now? That's a troubling stance.

It seems pretty obvious that some questions are better not posted on a
discussion site, because they bring down the value of the conversation.

------
code_duck
There has to be some middle ground between Apple's style and Google's style.
Apple overdoes their control a bit, and Google doesn't exercise enough
control. You shouldn't have to make an anonymous reviewer think about puppies
to get your app passed. I'd just like an app market where Apps are guaranteed
to not be privacy violators, trojans, or capable of damaging my hardware.

~~~
Steko
"There has to be some middle ground between Apple's style and Google's style."
Isn't Apple's approach actually the middle ground? Traditionally when you
bought software in a store you were looking at quite a bit more curation then
Apple does now.

"You shouldn't have to make an anonymous reviewer think about puppies to get
your app passed." You don't. I guess it could help if your app was in a gray
area but I don't see it helping that much.

"I'd just like an app market where Apps are guaranteed to not be privacy
violators, trojans, or capable of damaging my hardware." While we're going all
wishlist let's go scammer free and get an astroturf resistant rating system
with much higher discoverability.

~~~
code_duck
I'm specifically saying middle ground between Apple and Google's styles,
though. Traditional software publishing is obsolete and we don't really need
to worry about how that worked.

As for thinking about puppies, my point is that the 'human factor' in Apple's
review process seems to count for too much. It should be cut and dry: it is
legal, does what it claims and does nothing behind your back, and has no
trojans.

------
zbowling
I would love to contribute to how to get accepted faster, but I honestly
can't. I've followed all the rules the last couple years and really haven't
been rejected when I've tried to get through. About 1-2 weeks each time for
each app and update. Two years ago when the app store was new, I did test the
rules and got rejected in static analysis pass but that was under my own
personal user and for obvious stuff.

I really don't know what it takes to get rejected on top of the already
existing ground rules they spell out on their site. Apple really hasn't given
me any trouble at all (except emailing after accepting to change a little
artwork to clean up an icon next pass).

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r00fus
The tip about some previous hackernews apps being rejected for the word
"Hacker" sounds like it might be best to describe Hacker News as just
news.ycombinator.com "YCombinator is a startup incubator...".

~~~
BenSS
Interesting, I didn't have trouble getting my hacker news app accepted at all.
Never thought the name would be an issue.

------
lotusleaf1987
Summary: Be proactive and do as much work as you can to provide evidence on
your own behalf, don't expect them to do the work for you.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
That's a reasonable summary. From looking at my server logs I can tell that
they only spend a few minutes using the application during the approval
process, so it is vitally important that you tee up as much information as
possible for them.

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adnam
This is ridiculous! Why not offer fellatio and be done with it.

