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App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

daringfireball.net

121–130 of 233 posts

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#121
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you're lying. Why not add the comment "no tarot function" without reference to whether it existed in the past? A bit confusing because it's a trivial and seemingly unrelated statement but at least then you wouldn't be lying.

Why not just lie? The white lie is the most expedient thing to get the results you want, which is getting the app into the app store. It's not a slippery slope into a total moral decay of you as a human being. If a friend is hiding from an abusive partner, and that partner asks where your friend is, telling the truth would put your friend in danger, so lying is an important skill to have. The lie in this case gets pa…

[flagged]

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#122

as much as i loathe astrology, im not sure why astrology would be blanket banned in the first place. and i am surprised that apps like "Night Sky" (great app, no affiliation) made it past review if the app store reviewers are incapable of telling the difference. https://darkhours.io/ does look really cool, i hope they get this sorted out.

This is likely an outlier. I submitted a new astronomy app (even with “Astro” in the name!) just a few months ago with no problem.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#123
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You really can't just imagine Apple is doing a shit job. None of what you say can explain that Apple reviewers falsely accuse an app of being astrology when absolutely nothing proves it and double down when shown they are wrong. Again, absolutely nothing there could be explained by an "exponential number of submissions" nor solved by charging developers (even more than they already do!). Stop defending the indefensib…

It can explain, but it can’t excuse.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#124
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I believe Gruber's view is that the market forces in question are between iPhone and competing smartphones.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#125
Perhaps try and not collide your app's exact name with a horror survival video game [2024: Steam, Xbox, Playstation] that involves a trickster demonic clown who tosses mysterious game-changing cards at you? I mean, I'm just guessing here. [Spoiler alert: I asked Gemini LLM to cut to the chase]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=33623...

  TRICKSTER

  This entity is a demon-like clown that plays tricks on its victims. It is accompanied by Jack n Boxes that are triggered by cards he leaves around that offer good and bad results - the good result being the box that has a symbol that relates to the card you pick up. Instead of just killing you when he catches up, you have to go through what I call a "Just Dance" challenge. Hit the WASD, or whatever your keybinds are, when the indication reaches the box.

  We ran into an interesting situation. After long hours we could not get the escape key in the egyptan level. We have a clown, where we have to follow the cards. We can obtain every fuse, we finsih with the objectives, but there are not any card left to find, and the exit key was not it the middle of the lasers ( a mystery card was there). And one additional info, we also could not found the key for administrator 1... any suggestion ?
https://www.darkhours-thegame.com/

This is just one property named "Dark Hours"; there are horror films and mystery novels, and while it's a cromulent name for astronomy, just looking at the name gave me feelings of spiritualism or prophecy, on top of those cool nights watching Perseids with Dad and sister, in the flat field.

https://nic.io/whois-search.htm?domain_name=darkhours.io

Your website, darkhours dot io, is six days old. That is, it was created on August 1st, and it was not spotted by web.archive.org, until August 2, 2026. So your "Dark Hours" naming is really, really late to the game, so to speak. You should change your name before the game-makers of "Piece of Cake Studio" find you and send a cease and desist to change your domain name, before .io registrar revokes it, which appears to be in Colorado and/or the British Indian Ocean, for all intents and purposes.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#126
post #39

> 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…

But then you're lying. Why not add the comment "no tarot function" without reference to whether it existed in the past? A bit confusing because it's a trivial and seemingly unrelated statement but at least then you wouldn't be lying.

Why not say “app now has no tarot function” which can be read as implying that it used to but doesn’t actually say that.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#128
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> So your solution is to ban the sale of any kind of knife.

If you give a toddler a butcher's knife to play with and they get hurt, you'll likely get in trouble for child endangerment.

Using my car requires it be registered, pass my state's safety standards, and that I possess a valid license and follow a wide variety of rules.

Maybe a certain level of protection is, at times, acceptable?

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually thought the article could be more explicit about that, but in fairness I think the author figured readers were familiar with the app and that it would be obvious there’s no tarot functionality.

What could be more explicit than this? > It has no tarot function, no horoscopes, and nothing that I, or anyone else I’ve asked, would associate with astrology.

, I guess.

Re: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

#130

> We understand that the app includes a live tarot reading feature I don’t understand why tarot reading apps are banned, can someone enlighten me?

Apple has extremely/problematically vague guidelines about what constitutes spammy apps.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#des...

> Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience.

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