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Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

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Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#31

Post by akkartik »

vacri wrote: post #29
akkartik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google a lot and I still occasionally ask a question without thinking to google it. I think most people are like that. Why be snarky about it? I'd rather just remind them, 'google it' without all the unfriendly judgement that they're being lazy. It's not like people are personally asking icey or you dozens of questions a day. The questioner has shown no evidence of laziness. Let us all exercise a little restrai…

I see people being downmodded here for daring to use a little levity in comments because it's 'chaff', so why not apply the same quality restrictions for this kind of trivial question?

Oh yeah downvote such comments by all means. Refuse to answer the question. I'm behind these options.

Or gently remind them to google it. I wouldn't bother myself, but that's reasonable too.

Saying "it's literally the first result" like icey did seems more than a gentle reminder. It's the start of the slippery slope. Distracting - I don't even remember what we were talking about anymore.

Generalizing from the action to the actor like gnaritas did, criticizing somebody as rude, lazy and refusing to think for themselves because they thoughtlessly introduced some chaff -- now we're deep in over-reaction territory, breaking eggs with sledgehammers, generating more chaff than the original poster.

I'm not in any way defending the question itself. The best response to a minor infraction (including levity perhaps) is to just ignore it.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#32

Post by BenSS »

r00fus wrote: post #16

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...".

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

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#33

Post by gte910h »

palish wrote: post #7
gte910h wrote: post #6

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…

What's their phone number?

1 (408) 996-1010, ask for developer relations.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#34

Post by gte910h »

icey wrote: post #8
palish wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's their phone number?

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".

The correct number is 1 (408) 996-1010, ask for developer relations, 8am-5pm pacific time.

It is not on that page.

Be nice to them.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#35

Post by gte910h »

gnaritas wrote: post #10
bittermang wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comme…

> 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 su…

Google was "incorrect":

>The correct number is 1 (408) 996-1010, ask for developer relations, 8am-5pm pacific time.

>It is not on that page.

In this case, pointing out I left out the number was the correct move.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#36

Post by gte910h »

vacri wrote: post #28
panacea wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ack.. I can't fault your reasoning, and I am definitely in the http://lygtfy.com camp, but I have to pause and reflect on this: "Yes, some people prefer to ask a human rather than Google; those people are lazy and need to be educated, not pacified." Doesn't it strike you as somewhat borg-like, subsumed by technology that we should deny people to impulse to ask other people things? I realize that aggregators and comme…

There is an immense difference between "can someone give me their phone number" and "I'm having troubles with mdadm picking up this array, can someone help out?" Pandering to trivial requests only encourages trivial requests. Hell, in a forum recently I responded to someone saying "you need version -foo- and you can find it here (link)". He said thanks... then three days later asked where he could find it (link was s…

The number is actually not on the google page. Only by asking a human did they get the actual number I have called to get this sort of question answered on.

I honestly didn't realize it was a hard to find resource either which is why I left it out, but even googling it, I don't see it anywhere.

Also: Be nice to the guys on the other end of it. They've never been less than that to anyone who's been nice to them, nor treated them like idiots. Also, they don't set the policy, they just help devs navigate them. They are also decidedly non-technical, but policy based.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#37

Post by ThomPete »

gnaritas wrote: post #10
bittermang wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comme…

> 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 su…

I find this attitude to be a legacy of the IRC channels.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#38

Post by blub »

code_duck wrote: post #20

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.

There is: Nokia's Ovi store. Unfortunately, Symbian isn't doing that great compared to Android and iOS, at least in the minds of tech influencers.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#39

Post by code_duck »

Steko wrote: post #23
code_duck wrote: post #20

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.

"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 se…

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.

Re: Apple App Approval Tips Nobody Told Me About

#40

Post by samengland »

gnaritas wrote: post #21
akkartik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google a lot and I still occasionally ask a question without thinking to google it. I think most people are like that. Why be snarky about it? I'd rather just remind them, 'google it' without all the unfriendly judgement that they're being lazy. It's not like people are personally asking icey or you dozens of questions a day. The questioner has shown no evidence of laziness. Let us all exercise a little restrai…

> It's not like people are personally asking icey or you dozens of questions a day. On here, no, but in real life, yes, I get asked dozens of questions a day people could easily answer themselves if they just Googled. There's a reason programmers start getting annoyed with people being lazy; they're making you do their thinking for them and you get sick of it. > I think most people are like that. Why be snarky about…

I think the problem, as you've demonstrated with your flippant comment lies with this new 'internet culture' (tied in with anonymity on the internet) which has led to the development of certain attitudes and changes in social norms and 'values'.

For instance, if you were standing next to someone, and you asked them a question, it would not be the social norm to say "google it" even if you knew the answer.

Either that, or the internet just gives the idiots that would say "google it" if you spoke to them in person and they knew the answer, a platform for themselves, when in real life they'd have no friends/get ignored/get punched in the face.

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