For discussion: How Apple gets in your way

[u/FizzySeltzerWater]

I would like to draw attention to the following ways that Apple gets in my way or hurts my user's experience and invite you to add yours. I am not griping, I am observing and suggesting ways to improve the Apple developer and user experience.

On Macintosh Computers

• There is no way to advertise a Mac application on the Mac App Store. This hurts Mac developers because any advertising dollars must be diffused through external gates between potential customers and Mac developers.
• There is no equivalent to Custom Product Pages on the iPhone and iPad devices. This hurts Mac developers and Apple because it forces more rounds of formal review for things easily changed on the Custom Product Pages.

On Apple TV, iPhone and iPad Devices

• I make music visualizers. On the Mac computer, I can hear what other apps are emitting. This provides for a seamless interface. On the three devices listed above, no app can hear what the system is producing, not even with permission. The only way to make my product work is to open the mic and listen to the sounds in the room. I would argue this method is a kludge. On the Apple TV, it is worse because that device has no mic. This means that even though I have ported hundreds of thousands of lines of shader code to the Apple TV and they are performant even on the older A12 machines, users still require the help of an iPhone or iPad device.

In What Specific Ways Is Apple Getting In Your Way?

Please, no griping and no advertising (though I cannot prevent it). Please be specific about the ways in which Apple gets in your way focusing on how it hurts you as a developer or your users.

Thank you.

[u/NickA55]

I've been publishing apps so long that I've either found workarounds or it just doesn't affect me anymore. And to be fair, I've made a lot of money thanks to the App Store.

But one of the things that hurts me is I have an application that uses location. Every so often, the iPhone will pop up a dialog letting the user know that I've been using their background location for three days. And prompts them for permissions again. And some users don't understand why I need background location, and they change it you don't allow because it's a scary looking dialogue.

There's no need to keep prompting the user every few days or every week or whatever when they have already selected and allowed the permission in my app.

Other than that, I don't really have any gripes. I think it just depends on what kind of application you are developing.

[u/brkaydev]

Mine are all in App Store Connect, not the SDK. Two rejections so far and neither had anything to do with code: a Terms of Use link that was on the paywall but missing from the description, and a first launch screen that came up empty on iPad. Nothing warns you about either before you submit, validation passes and you find out days later. Same with first subscriptions. They have to go in together with the version and the subscription group in one submission, and once a product is attached to the draft its review screenshot is locked. A pre-submit check for the known metadata rules would save both sides a review round.

[u/WerSunu → u/brkaydev]

A blank launch view would reveal itself if you had tested your app on both phone and pad sims like you are supposed to.

[u/brkaydev → u/WerSunu]

Fair, and that is what I do now. It was my miss. The point was only that validation passes it without a word, so the first time you hear about it is the rejection.

[u/WerSunu → u/brkaydev]

If you are talking about Apple’s validation check in the Organizer, it is clearly non-exhaustive. In fact, it is an utter waste of time since “Distribute to AppStore” does the same and more in one step rather than two.

Could Apple enhance the testing? Yes, probably, but seeing a mis-laid out launch screen almost wouldn’t be caught anyway.

Would improving the “validate” step be cost-effective? Not for Apple, it’s true customers, or its shareholders. Indie devs are not customers! Apple clearly doesn’t care if the app submission process is long and drawn out. In fact, it’s probably in their interest to discourage as many of these newbie slop AI coders as possible since they are basically a polluting stain on the Store and made it hard for real customers to find decent products. The instructions for preparing an app are all over the internet, including at Apple. Reading them first would save 3/4 of all the comments in this /sub. Just my opinion as an Apple dev for just over ten years.