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App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

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Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#111
post #18

From https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/apples-tigh... > In a sworn deposition in the Epic lawsuit, Phillip Shoemaker, the former head of the App Review team, said employees in his department generally did not have a technical background in computer coding. They needed to know how to use a Mac and an iPhone, he said. > “Qualifications were that they could breathe, they could think,” he said. And they ty…

This isn't really a bad thing. That's exactly what you want from an app reviewer. You want someone who has critical thinking skills but is looking at the app from the perspective of a typical customer. Anything involving technical code review of apps on Apple's scale should be automated anyway.

> has critical thinking skills

That's not what the court testimony said. Could think does not imply could think critically, especially not when preceded by "could breathe", which is an absurdly low bar. Might as well say, "not literally dead".

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#112
post #47

> But that’s not what happened at all. Godier proceeded through a series of escalations up to the App Review Board and the Review Board responded that they determined the original rejection was valid because, I shit you not, “We understand that the app includes a live tarot reading feature.” > It has no tarot function, no horoscopes, and nothing that I, or anyone else I’ve asked, would associate with astrology. I hav…

Is Gruber starting to realize Apple's monopoly is bad? App stores should not exist in a world where only two phone operating systems exist. All apps MUST be installable via web. Come on, EU. Help us out here. Free us from distribution tyranny. Do it before Google morphs into the same hell beast. Soon you won't be able to read unapproved, unattested bytes. It's coming. We need as many freedoms as we can get. Apple can…

> Is Gruber starting to realize Apple's monopoly is bad?

"I do not see the conflict between the view that the App Store review system is failing and the view that it's not the government's business to intervene. Allowing failing systems to fail is how market forces work." https://mastodon.social/@gruber/117055639204173161

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#113
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Apple should do its fucking job correctly. It is not a poor little company, they have no excuse for this rank incompetence. None.

I'm sure the number of submissions has gone up exponentially due to AI. Since real people review apps, Apple should charge per app / version submission.

Oh, is the 100$/year developer fee not enough? And all the money people pay for their devices? And the 30% cut for any App Store transaction? And the money from the advertisements?

Poor Apple needs to ask for even more money to do their job?

Sure seems like they could find some other way.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, right! Here’s hoping we have many more restrictions in the future.

Why comment on a site with zero interest in actually interacting with people?

I think there’s probably others reading too.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat, but still very subjective. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#spa... You can still always get around them (at least my experience), but it just takes a lot of time

Look up "wireless printing" in the App Store sometime. As best I can tell, one or two actors have spammed the entire category with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of subscription-heavy repackagings of CUPS drivers as iOS apps. They all have very similar blue line-art icons of a printer, similar preview images with similar typography, and are all crammed full of subscription options. They are probably making a killing on pe…

> the App Store will be the one real stain on his legacy

Well, and the Apple Car. And the Butterfly Keyboard and that horrible i9 16" MBP. Plus the Airpower, and the Vision Pro, and he cancelled the entire Mac Pro lineup too. Also the $1,000 VESA monitor mount and goofy desktop wheels, and we should probably also mention his meetings with Donald Trump and eventual White House dinner with Bin Salman. Tim also failed to legally deter NSO Group, held a grudge against Nvidia during a $4 trillion ARM/CUDA datacenter boom, greenlit Liquid Glass, proposed Client-Side Scanning and fought dirty against organic and reasonable EU regulations.

But besides that, yes, the pitiful state of the App Store will be remembered as his true strategic slip-up.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#116
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You grandma can keep the „restricted“ flag on then. I will be happy to disable it on my device

That's great until your device is weaponised against others (see: open HTTP proxies, open DNS resolvers, open SMTP servers, several billion IoT devices, and countless other examples)

Exactly, which is why we shouldn’t be allowing user “software installs” on any device, not just phones. The world would be a lot better if all tech were fully locked down, “freedom” be damned.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#117
post #112
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Gruber starting to realize Apple's monopoly is bad? App stores should not exist in a world where only two phone operating systems exist. All apps MUST be installable via web. Come on, EU. Help us out here. Free us from distribution tyranny. Do it before Google morphs into the same hell beast. Soon you won't be able to read unapproved, unattested bytes. It's coming. We need as many freedoms as we can get. Apple can…

> Is Gruber starting to realize Apple's monopoly is bad? "I do not see the conflict between the view that the App Store review system is failing and the view that it's not the government's business to intervene. Allowing failing systems to fail is how market forces work." https://mastodon.social/@gruber/117055639204173161

The criticism of monopolies is that market forces aren't able to let a failing system fail.

The App Store doesn't compete on its own merits because Apple actively prevents competition from letting it decide what the better system is.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two big problems with this (not that Apple’s caprice is the only alternative): 1. The vast majority of people are Grandma, and they do not have a Johnny available to administer their tech. Most people are not technical. 2. The vast majority of Grandmas will follow instructions on a “how do I share cute photo” website even when that website directs them to dig deep into configuration settings and ignore six…

And what if my grandma is Admiral Hopper. I wonder if there's a way to argue for or against paternalistic corporate gatekeepers without invoking sexism, ageism, or both?

I used the terms from the grandparent post with tongue firmly in cheek. I didn’t intend to be sexist or ageist and agree with your criticism.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#119
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scammers will manage to manipulate people into giving away all of their savings just fine no matter what restrictions are put in place. The excuse is just another "think of the children" to maintain control and profit.

People will murder people, too. We don't have to make it trivially easy .

So your solution is to ban the sale of any kind of knife. Sucks that people can't really cook at home anymore, but do we have to make it trivially easy for murderers?

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#120
The words astro-nomy and astro-logy are similar, but this is no "fluke".

There's a Wikipedia article with some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy

I imagine astronomers have been sighing resignedly at dinner parties for a couple of millenia:

In the Hellenistic world, the Greek words 'astrologia' and 'astronomia' were often used interchangeably, but they were conceptually not the same.

In his compilatory work Etymologiae [c. 625], Isidore of Seville noted explicitly the difference between the terms astronomy and astrology (Etymologiae, III, xxvii) and the same distinction appeared later in the texts of Arabian writers.

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