The App Store is doing too little, too late
- Developers are fed up with Apple’s frustrating App Store reviewers and guidelines.
Lately, the App Store has been a bit of a mess. Actually, that’s an understatement. App Store rejections for confusing reasons. Lawsuits. And a new rule change to the guidelines that does very little. What is going on?
To begin with, Samantha John, co-founder of iOS, iPadOS and Mac-exclusive coding app Hopscotch, voiced her frustrations on Twitter last Friday. An bug fix to the app was rejected by the App Store Review (Let’s call it ASR for short) rejected the update due to “promoted in-app purchases had identical titles and descriptions which would be confused to users.”
The descriptions and titles were already different, but a new submission changed it even further, and got rejected again.The app was rejected because "our promoted in-app purchases had identical titles and descriptions which could be confusing to users."
— Samantha John (@SamJ0hn) August 26, 2021
She filed an appeal, and Apple agreed to release the patch on the condition that the titles and descriptions be changed, when it already was. An ASR representative called, and Samatha explained that she did not know what the problem was.
Turns out, the rejection was supposedly a glitch and that it was a mistake, hence why they were calling her. This wasn’t her first time having a situation with ASR, nor was it the worst.
It's just the last straw. The combination of fear and the fact that I actually really *like* the people we work with at Apple kept me silent in the past.
— Samantha John (@SamJ0hn) August 26, 2021
Another Apple-platform exclusive developer, Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic Inc. (creator of apps such as Nova and Transmit, games like Untitled Goose Game, and the Playdate game system) had also tweeted about the App Store, saying it “has brought me to exciting new mental places”
The fact that these developers specifically are tweeting about this should be a major source of concern for Apple, since they were in the small group of people chosen (and generally very fond of Apple) to showcase the capabilities of the M1 Macs in the November Apple Event last year.
Cabel and Samatha showcasing what their apps can do on the M1 chip
I thought I had experienced the full possible range of feelings regarding Apple and the App Store, but settling a lawsuit, promising absolutely nothing new as part of the settlement, and spinning that as some kind of big developer win, has brought me to exciting new mental places
— Cabel (@cabel) August 27, 2021
He specifically referenced the new changes to the App Store Review Guidelines announced just last Thursday, them being:
- The Small Business Program would be maintained for at least 3 more years
- The current App Store Search algorithm would be retained for at least 3 more years
- Developers may now inform users of alternative payment methods through email (users would have to consent to receive these)
- Apple will expand the number of price points available for subscriptions to devs
- Apple will maintain the option the appeal a rejection
- Apple will create an annual transparency report from data about the App Store on apple.com
- Apple will establish a US small dev fund
In addition to the aforementioned changes, developers based in the US who earned $1 million or less for all of their apps in every year between June 4, 2015, and April 26 2021 would be distributed $250-$30,000. (The settlement has not been approved by a judge as of yet)
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These changes are not particularly helpful to devs, as the current App Store search algorithm/system frankly (sorry for the language) SUCKS, big time. For example, Paul Haddad’s third-party Twitter client, Tweetbot, is actually the 2nd search result in the App Store.
App Store search won’t change for 3 years? FML! pic.twitter.com/XyfePvLghJ
— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) August 27, 2021
While the ad itself is different, the results are largely the same on my end:
Christian Selig’s third-party Reddit client, Apollo, gives me an ad that has absolutely nothing to do with Reddit or any social network service at all (warning: the ad may be NSFW):
It also seems to remove the app’s preview images, even though it is the highest-rated app with the name “Apollo”.
The other guideline change allows devs to inform users of alternative payment methods other than Apple’s built-in In-App Purchase system using communication methods such as email, avoiding Apple’s 30/15% commission fee. The catch is, the user has to manually opt-in to these emails and be given an option to opt-out.
Before these recent changes, developers weren’t allowed to tell users about any alternative payment methods, such as PayPal. This meant services that exclusively used alternative methods for subscriptions, such as Netflix and Spotify, were not allowed to tell users how and where to even pay for a service to use the app (Premium tier for the case of Spotify), resulting in confusion as to how to access the said service.
The Premium tab in Spotify for free-tier users, which has no information whatsoever on how to acquire the Premium tier.
Frankly, this is quite ridiculous, and it’s not just developers and companies that think this, it’s entire governments as well. Earlier this year, EU Executive Vice President of the European Commission Margrethe Vestager accused Apple of breaching EU competition law.
A new bill passed yesterday by the South Korean government prevents Apple from limiting developers to only using it’s iAP system, at least in South Korea (for now). Apple had this to say about it in a statement given to MacRumors:
Apple’s excuse for users not trusting other sources for payment doesn’t hold up well, considering millions of customers use services such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay among many others that they trust, and will continue to do so for the time being.
I don’t really know if Apple is simply tone-deaf about these issues that plague the many developers who are the life and blood of one of the most profit-generating pieces of software for Apple, the App Store, or the higher-ups simply don’t care about it, but one thing is for sure: Apple has to fix these issues, and fast, or else their ignorance will come back to bite them in the future.
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