rules for thee but not for me
Apple has never been fair with its review, sadly.
> I would expect Apple's response to be "change it back".
Companies should not have to bend over to apple's whims just to get their software in end user hands. Hopefully upcoming EU regulation will reign apple's overreach in a bit.
So yes, I will be extremely happy with it. This opens doors to all kinds of software that can compete with one another, and if I don't like it, I can simply uninstall it myself.
Our app was rejected after review until we updated an external support doc to which the app linked. The doc contained system requirements for both iOS and Android devices, and we were specifically rejected for even having mentioned the competing operating system.
> The doc contained system requirements for both iOS and Android devices, and we were specifically rejected for even having mentioned the competing operating system.
So in the end everyone loses, except Apple.
Sure, they keep some actually bad opinions out, but they also keep correct but unpopular opinions out.
The Sun revolves around the Earth! Downvote Galileo!
My phone is not a fashion piece. AFAICT the blue bubbles will show up with an old 4S just as well as with a 14 Pro Max.
I have an iPhone - which I got after many years with Android - because iMessage is an essential app for me. I live in the US, so my business partners do not have [choice of alternative messaging app] installed and they are not going to install it just for me. I'm a doctor working in a hospital that has two complete dead spots for cell reception, and whose IT department blocks WiFi calling. So I can't make phone calls on either service, and only on iOS can I get messages that are really, really important over the hospital WiFi.
I could talk until I was blue in the face about how other methods are better. Or how Apple is being a gigantic bunch of assholes by not using something other than vanilla SMS if you're not an iMessage user. But it's sitting at about 30:1, and you can either go along and be aware of important things going on, or you can be left out.
When business decisions are being made over those conversations, I'd be a fool to ignore it. I don't much like the iOS way, having gotten used to Android and LineageOS, but after my experience with the Nexus 6P that suffered the infamous "battery goes to shit overnight one day" problem that Google wouldn't fix, as well as being dropped from updates after two years, five years of security updates from model introduction sounded pretty nice.
What alternative would you suggest? And is that alternative as universal as SMS?
But on Android, you can replace the default messaging app, and that app can have access to SMS as a fallback, so it's really easy to convince people to switch. "Hey, uh, plain messaging is annoying some of us, please install this app, we can all use it, but it will work even with people who don't have it over the regular text service."
Can't do that on iOS.
It's still getting rolled out a lot of places. Google sees it as the successor to SMS and it's built into native messaging apps. I recently saw cross-carrier support get enabled locally and that made it universal enough that so far anyone I message that's running Android is already connected via RCS.
Apple intentionally doesn't support RCS in order to keep imessages from interoperating with android.
> You don't need Apple to make that decision for you.
I also don't need an app making the decision of whether I need an account. Apple preserves that choice for users. And they're not making any decisions for the user about installing. Effectively zero apps will leave the store over this rule, so the user retains full choice over installing.
I don't want Apple making many system-wide rules on behavior, even on Apple's own systems (which they share with their users.)
That being said, they're very right about this. Making the distinction between, on one side, apps that are useless without accounts (like banking apps) or apps that are made to help with already existing accounts, and on the other side apps that are just forcing accounts to capture and control the users, is a smart and thoughtful move.
You know, this is how almost every rule system on the planet operates. Ultimately there’s an arbiter whose job is to look at the totality of the case.
This isn't what's happening though. If you're a big app you get to do whatever you want, and if you're small then you have to do as you're told.
As opposed to… humans working through a specific situation for a specific solution?
There's also the ethical concern about how apple (or their reviewer) can bully you specifically which means there is no other way to delivery our software to your users, other than complying with a bully.
Sure, the world is rife with ethical concerns.
"not for me" isn't what's happening in a comparison between two third party apps.
> Companies should not have to bend over to apple's whims just to get their software in end user hands. Hopefully upcoming EU regulation will reign apple's overreach in a bit.
Maybe in general, but I think a rule against requiring unnecessary accounts is a good rule. The EU should consider making that a regulation.
Being the voice of "this is never, ever going to be accepted into the AppStore, it is a perfect example of what you can't do" can be a very lonely journey.
Their response, not the exact wording since it was over a decade ago, was along the lines of: "1. We're reviewing your app, not theirs, so what they can do is irrelevant. 2. Your app core use case clearly functions without an account as evidenced by the previous versions having full functionality not requiring an account."
1. Is a standard Apple reply when you compare your app's treatment to others'. Everyone gets this when they bring another developer's app into the argument.
2. Called our bluff and is pretty hard to argue against unless we changed something core to our backend such that it now requires an account. Even if that was the case, I would expect Apple's response to be "change it back".
Throughout the whole exchange with Apple, I had to be Devil's Advocate, since I advised against the change to require an account from the start, being apparently the only person in the company who had actually read the AppStore guidelines. Nobody listened to me, of course.