101–110 of 340 posts
This is relatable. I have spent many hours attempting to get someone at the IRS to answer my questions, and the best part is that they have always ended up hanging up on me after putting me on hold, and there is no way to pick back up where you left off with them since it's all done verbally. I shall now go read The Metamorphosis.
It'd be great if google offered an option for a video call with a reviewer for $500/hr as an escalation option for businesses who are getting nowhere with the regular process. Ideally you'd get a refund if you turned out to be correct, but I'd be happy even without that.
Automated rules and policies are saving Google hundreds of millions of dollars an hour; they don't want to open the floodgates of spammers reverse-engineering ways to socially engineer the hapless app review humans.
Surely this is exageration, right?
Here was a recent Apple example:
My app works by parsing the HTML of hacker news site. Recently, the site had a few small changes behind the scenes in the html which broke the XPath for the parser and thus broke my app. So I quickly fixed the issue and submitted updated to both Apple and Google.
Usually Google used to be faster in reviewing apps in the past but something has changed and now Google seems to take longer to review app than Apple. Google took 4 days to review and approve the update this time. Basically the app was entirely broken for those days and I got countless justified emails from users.
Apple was even more annoying. My app is available for both iOS and MacOS. It’s the same code base. MacOS one got approved within couple hours. iOS one is where the problem started. They rejected the iOS update telling me my app didn’t have features to report users, block users, flag objectionable content etc.
This was the second time Apple had rejected for this same issue. I responded that I have already dealt with this in past and they need to login to the app with a user account before seeing buttons to flag objectionable content. Seemed obvious.
Next they rejected the update again and this time it was even more annoying. They told me that my app didn’t have a way for users to delete their user account. I responded that my app is merely a client for hacker news and doesn’t have access to user accounts. They kept rejecting it. Eventually, I ended up adding a button for deleting user account:
https://i.imgur.com/bvaZxBI_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&...
The button tells the user to contact HN via email to delete accounts. Apple rejected it again saying this was not enough and having to email to delete account is not appropriate. After several back and forth, I asked them to call me. They did. I explained my situation and they finally understood my point that I don’t run hacker news. I merely provide a client app and explain to the user the steps HN provides for deleting accounts. After all this, they finally approved it.
Apple in the past has also had situations where they will reject an update, I will respond, they will approve and then next update, they will reject again for the same issue. It’s like they don’t seem to read the previous review notes.
With that said, Apple at least lets me talk to a human being and they seem to finally understand the issue. With Google, that seems impossible to do.
Overall, I will rate Apple review 5/10 and Google would be 4/10. Neither should be happy with how they deal with it.
This whole app store thing with Apple/Google is BS. Imagine if your car could only drive to locations approved as safe by the car manufacturer, and they could auto-ban your Grandma's house with no recourse.
At least on Android you can install alternate app stores like F-Droid. All you have to do is allow apps to be installed from unknown sources. If you use Apple, you're just out of luck unless you want to mess with whatever hacky workaround is popular this week.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine if your car could only drive to locations approved as safe by the car manufacturer We're not very far away from that. Example: Tesla sells auto insurance based on real-time tracking of driving behavior, and explicitly lists "where you live" as a factor. So it's quite possible "real-time location safety" is already part of their model. So you may already be charged more for driving to your Grandma's house. G…
Location of the insured vehicle has been a factor since I started having insurance about 24 years ago (speaking for 20 years of Geico, and more recently Progressive).
The important distinction is that the same entity tracking your real-time location also has unprecedented control over the car and your ability to use it, and very little transparency. This is basically the same dynamics as app stores.
You know how tech founder and worker professed self-images often include the phrase "we're changing the world"?
I doubt anyone ever sat down and congratulated themselves on changing the world to be more Kafkaesque.
Downloads from our website for the app went up by 2x, but that number dwarfs in comparison to installs from the Play Store. What can I say, Android developers are slaves to The Algorithm. At least until some other Algorithm at Google decides to properly staff up its support centers for developers.
As a contingency, what we do is:
- Sign our own APKs.
- Bake in a custom update mechanism as an escape hatch (this is against ToS, but whatever...).
This whole app store thing with Apple/Google is BS. Imagine if your car could only drive to locations approved as safe by the car manufacturer, and they could auto-ban your Grandma's house with no recourse.
This already happens with Drone. you can only flight to locations approved as safe by the manufacturer, and they could ban a location without recourse.
