I think the most frustrating part of app review is the inconsistency. Ive seen it happen while I worked at FANG level companies down to my own apps and doing contracting for startups. Each time you submit an update you are rolling the dice that a feature that was perfectly fine for every single app submission previously will be flagged for rule a violation.
A perfect example is one of the apps I do contract work for has a web view directory feature that doesn't have any login pages on it directly, but after about 3-4 clicks you can get to one for the people who's listings are on there. After 7 years of this app functioning exactly like this (and 1.5 years of sign in with apple existing) they decided it violated the app store rules because it didn't feature sign in with apple... It took an app store appeal and almost 2 weeks of back and forth over the exact wording of the sign in with apple rules to get them to agree that the original reviewer had overstepped their bounds.
Although my absolute favorite rejection has been for putting a small apology to my users that I had quarantine due to a covid exposure and thats why the app update was delayed as I was unable to work and keep my family safe. It again took an appeal and 2 weeks for the apple to realize that my app hadn't suddenly become a covid app, which should have been obviously from the first glance at the covid flagging.
Its gotten so bad I've even started selling app store pre-review services to some of my old clients that now have internal teams as I feel like I know the app store rules better than I know swift at this point.
A perfect example is one of the apps I do contract work for has a web view directory feature that doesn't have any login pages on it directly, but after about 3-4 clicks you can get to one for the people who's listings are on there. After 7 years of this app functioning exactly like this (and 1.5 years of sign in with apple existing) they decided it violated the app store rules because it didn't feature sign in with apple... It took an app store appeal and almost 2 weeks of back and forth over the exact wording of the sign in with apple rules to get them to agree that the original reviewer had overstepped their bounds.
Although my absolute favorite rejection has been for putting a small apology to my users that I had quarantine due to a covid exposure and thats why the app update was delayed as I was unable to work and keep my family safe. It again took an appeal and 2 weeks for the apple to realize that my app hadn't suddenly become a covid app, which should have been obviously from the first glance at the covid flagging.
Its gotten so bad I've even started selling app store pre-review services to some of my old clients that now have internal teams as I feel like I know the app store rules better than I know swift at this point.