Apple rejected the app because the developer sought to use another company's product name and game title to bolster their own sales.
Seems reasonable to me- at least as far as App Store rejections go.
A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
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Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#22Maybe you should just not put other companies' copyrighted game names in your keywords. It sounds like Apple is purposefully slowing you down because they consider you to be malicious.
Contrary to popular opinion, using copyrighted terms is not against the law. For example, you shouldn't feel threatened that the black helicopters are going to swarm overhead if you are using copyrighted words like Apple, iPhone, Wii etc. in ordinary conversations. Using copyrighted terms is questionable for products if those terms (a) are in the same category as the copyrighted term (in the case of Wii, I am assumin…
Apple makes it pretty clear to developers that trademarked terms are not to be used in keywords.
It's not illegal to smoke indoors. But if you smoke inside my house, I will ask you to leave. Do you have a problem with that?
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#23My personal favorite reason for rejection is "Your big icon doesn't match the little icon". I've gotten that twice so far.
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#24Maybe you should just not put other companies' copyrighted game names in your keywords. It sounds like Apple is purposefully slowing you down because they consider you to be malicious.
I strongly disagree, and it's disappointing to see basically a knee-jerk comment at the top.
Maybe you should just not put other companies' copyrighted game names in your keywords.
These are just some specific parameters to the same scenario that has played out countless times for other developers. The more general criticisms ARE common even when you don't "put other companies' copyrighted game names in your keywords". You are in no way addressing the actual criticisms.
It sounds like Apple is purposefully slowing you down because they consider you to be malicious.
First of all, no, not really, it sounds like par for the course for Apple. Many developers sail through with no problems, but way too many developers end up with an experience like this.
Second of all, I find it hard to think of a worse way to handle the situation than "purposefully slowing you down because they consider you to be malicious." Honestly, there's so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start.
Nevermind the $100 yearly fee for having the privilege to be rejected - very slowly, inconsistently, and SERIALLY, one reason at a time - by the App Store, right?
I'm baffled that you're making this be the developer's fault. It's sheer incompetence at its best (the alternative being malice on Apple's part, which I think is far worse, but also much more unlikely).
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#25Maybe you should just not put other companies' copyrighted game names in your keywords. It sounds like Apple is purposefully slowing you down because they consider you to be malicious.
It looks like Apple did the right thing here. They stopped the app from using a term copyrighted by Nintendo. They also communicated the rejection reason to the developer clearly. Ultimately, this is probably going to be a win-win for both sides. Apple does the right thing. The app description and keywords don't mislead users (and as a result of the blog post complaining about Apple, the app also gets a lot of free p…
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Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#26From the article: Sure Apple has its reasons, namely pushing its 85k or 100k or 250k apps commercials to prove it has the most evolved app ecosystem versus its peers. But if Apple doesn’t fix these problems soon, those numbers will begin to mean less and less, and at some point the number of apps in the App store will be about as meaningful as the number of videos uploaded to YouTube. That doesn't really make sense t…
Turning down apps to maintain quality, I'll give you that (even though there's a lot of room to argue the specifics).
Turning down bug fixes for stupid reasons, though? How does that maintain quality, if it takes over a month to push a fix to an app? Eventually devs get sick of it (especially if their apps are closer to the hobby end of the spectrum) and stop maintaining them. Can't blame them.
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#27The sheer arbitrariness of many Apple rejections makes it pretty clear what's going on: applications are put into a queue, a group of approval guys pop the queue, review, and either approve or reject. But they aren't given clear standards for approval, so your results vary based on the whim of whichever reviewer you get.
Which suggests an interesting hack: when you get a rejection, just re-submit instantly with no changes. You probably won't get the same reviewer next time and it may pass.
Obviously, this doesn't apply to substantive issues. But even there, you could re-submit immediately, then start working on the changes; who knows, you might get an approval back while you're still making the fixes.
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Contrary to popular opinion, using copyrighted terms is not against the law. For example, you shouldn't feel threatened that the black helicopters are going to swarm overhead if you are using copyrighted words like Apple, iPhone, Wii etc. in ordinary conversations. Using copyrighted terms is questionable for products if those terms (a) are in the same category as the copyrighted term (in the case of Wii, I am assumin…
Apple makes it pretty clear to developers that trademarked terms are not to be used in keywords. It's not illegal to smoke indoors. But if you smoke inside my house, I will ask you to leave. Do you have a problem with that?
If you're all smiles one moment, and throw a temper tantrum about it the next... then completely forget about it five minutes later... or if you call me 2 weeks later to complain that I smoked at your house... or if you kick me out while someone else is using your couch as an ashtray... then I would probably stop visiting, anyway.
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#29Maybe you should just not put other companies' copyrighted game names in your keywords. It sounds like Apple is purposefully slowing you down because they consider you to be malicious.
It looks like Apple did the right thing here. They stopped the app from using a term copyrighted by Nintendo. They also communicated the rejection reason to the developer clearly. Ultimately, this is probably going to be a win-win for both sides. Apple does the right thing. The app description and keywords don't mislead users (and as a result of the blog post complaining about Apple, the app also gets a lot of free p…
I sort of agree with you, but just because a name is trademarked (you can't copyright a name), doesn't mean you can NEVER EVER use it. For example, Wii. There you go.
Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
#30"Does it make sense when iCombat Lite, having been live for 3 months with 100k installs and no complaints, suffers a 40+ day delay because it is being forced to the back of the line over and over again to wait amongst what is new crapware?"
I never understand why iPhone developers seem to always think that the apps they write are so money yet apps that everyone else writes are "crapware" and are thus clogging up the app store. I agree with this author's point that you should not have to go back to the start of the queue, but that should be for all apps, and if you want a freer app store (which I do) you're going to have to put up with more "crapware" not less.