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Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

david.dev

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Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#71

Post by floatingatoll »

MauranKilom wrote: post #41
plorkyeran wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bullshit about banning someone who has been notified that they are in violation of the rules and then tries to hide their use of private APIs rather than stop using them? That's exactly what I would do in Apple's position. Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught the next time isn't an honest mistake.

> then tries to hide their use of private APIs rather than stop using them [...] Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught the next time isn't an honest mistake. This is missing the point of the post you are replying to. Say you identify five closed API dependencies and remove them. Do you resubmit? If you missed any others, you and all your apps might be banned.

Yes, you resubmit.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#72

Post by rdevnull »

megous wrote: post #48
plorkyeran wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bullshit about banning someone who has been notified that they are in violation of the rules and then tries to hide their use of private APIs rather than stop using them? That's exactly what I would do in Apple's position. Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught the next time isn't an honest mistake.

Presumably you can't check for violation yourself without submitting.

exactly. Apparently Apple just started now to check against these private APIs.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#73

Post by [deleted] »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #22

The basic concept isn't too disturbing; Apple packages private APIs that have no guaranteed behavior or expectation of support. If you depend on those APIs, it's very possible that your app will break in a future OS update. This is conceptually no different than calling something in the sun.* packages in Java. For years it was ok, and then ... it wasn't. This, however, is draconian: > Continuing to use or conceal non…

[deleted]

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#74

Post by saagarjha »

MauranKilom wrote: post #41
plorkyeran wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bullshit about banning someone who has been notified that they are in violation of the rules and then tries to hide their use of private APIs rather than stop using them? That's exactly what I would do in Apple's position. Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught the next time isn't an honest mistake.

> then tries to hide their use of private APIs rather than stop using them [...] Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught the next time isn't an honest mistake. This is missing the point of the post you are replying to. Say you identify five closed API dependencies and remove them. Do you resubmit? If you missed any others, you and all your apps might be banned.

How exactly do you miss a dependency?! If it's not your code, then it's a dependency that you need to look at.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#75

Post by mikl »

peruvian wrote: post #16

Probably not a big deal for publishers - most (non-tech) people I know download Electron apps via their own website e.g. Slack, Notion, etc.

Even if its just 10% of your users that installed your app from MAS, that’s still a huge problem. 10% of your users you can’t ship an update to and have no easy way of moving to your self-hosted updater, that’s a major problem.

I personally prefer using MAS for such apps, since that means updates are installed automatically overnight without having to deal with other people’s annoying auto-updating software. Wish Chrome itself was in the MAS, so I didn’t have to deal with Google Autoupdater.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#76

Post by archie2 »

friedman23 wrote: post #14
natch wrote: post #8

The lesson here is write native apps using the preferred native tools of the platform, and avoid shortcut solutions.

> and avoid shortcut solutions and then the app is never written

the overwhelming amount of apps that are native beg to differ

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#77

Post by rdevnull »

outworlder wrote: post #11

> I did write back to Apple trying to explain that I am using Electron and I can't really change any of these public-framework usage Yeah. So? By linking a framework that's using private APIs, this becomes your problem now. And Electron's problem, by extension. Go bug them, not Apple.

this is exactly what they told me in the follow up message. I am somehow surprised how the bug in electron repository is not given much importance at all.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#78

Post by saagarjha »

kjksf wrote: post #61
outworlder wrote: post #11

> I did write back to Apple trying to explain that I am using Electron and I can't really change any of these public-framework usage Yeah. So? By linking a framework that's using private APIs, this becomes your problem now. And Electron's problem, by extension. Go bug them, not Apple.

How short are memories. I remember how Microsoft was vilified for supposedly having secret Windows APIs that allowed Microsoft apps to get better performance. That was mostly made up and even if such APIs existed, any program could have used it. Even at the height of corporate arrogance Microsoft didn't dream of banning developers for using undocumented APIs. Apple seems intent on becoming more evil than Microsoft ev…

I believe CAContext is private API but performs better than documented alternatives.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#79

Post by floatingatoll »

freehunter wrote: post #45
plorkyeran wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bullshit about banning someone who has been notified that they are in violation of the rules and then tries to hide their use of private APIs rather than stop using them? That's exactly what I would do in Apple's position. Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught the next time isn't an honest mistake.

Because Electron developers might say "we fixed it" and the app developer might resubmit based on that and now they're banned due to a mistake made by an upstream dependency. It's not like this app developer is intentionally using private APIs. "Resubmitting the same thing and hoping that it doesn't get caught" seems to be a strawman.

That resubmit approach ways used by at least one camera app years ago who masked their private API usage to secretly include a volume button “take photo” feature. They were told to knock it off (and Apple also added that option to the API at a later date).

Between that and the folks who hid MAME in an app or whatever, I think Apple is not simply constructing straw men when they warn that attempts to circumvent the spirit of their request - and the letter of it - will result in a lifetime ban.

Re: Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store

#80

Post by saagarjha »

rdevnull wrote: post #77
outworlder wrote: post #11

> I did write back to Apple trying to explain that I am using Electron and I can't really change any of these public-framework usage Yeah. So? By linking a framework that's using private APIs, this becomes your problem now. And Electron's problem, by extension. Go bug them, not Apple.

this is exactly what they told me in the follow up message. I am somehow surprised how the bug in electron repository is not given much importance at all.

> I am somehow surprised how the bug in electron repository is not given much importance at all.

By Apple, or the Electron developers?

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