4.3 Design Spam (Suggestion for Apple)

Hello also, I would like to make an appeal on behalf of legitimate developers around the world. How long has item 4.3 be around? It seems like I’ve read that rule many months back. And after seeing all the spam apps on the market I wondered if this rule was even being inforced. It seems, perhaps, they are finally starting to do something about it.

What is furstrating for legitmate developers is having to compete with all these thousands, if not millions, of spammed apps. Take Solitaire for example. Just do a search and you will find multiple developers all with the same exact solitaire game spammed 50+ times. Each of these apps are identitcal except for the background and the card back. And they all have 10 to 50—5 star reviews! Many of the reveiws are identical across multiple apps and developers. Do the math. And the worst thing is they utilize the keywords so that these apps appear in all sorts of searches.

I trully love Apple’s quote in the Review Guidelines, “Come up with your own ideas. We know you have them, so make yours come to life. Don’t simply copy the latest popular app on the App Store, or make some minor changes to another app’s name or UI and pass it off as your own.”

If this concept is beyond your capabilities as a developer then perhaps app development isn’t your cup of tea. But if Apple never does anything about it, it will only hurt all of us. When there are 5 million solitaire apps on the market we all lose.

Apple needs to implement a way for users to report spammed apps, as for some reason, these apps are getting passed the review process, hmmm, for some reason…

Hello,

Found a solution for this?

I have exatcly same issue! =(

You say, "The company is happy that it can release its application to its customers".

Is there a problem if the *company* releases the application?

Isn't it only a problem if the developer is the one doing the releasing and has many of these apps?

Man, do u have any sugestion? Im br developer. Please, contact me, i am at the same boat.

Please, mail me afporcari@gmail.com

precisamos juntos achar uma solução.

Hi,

I work in a portuguese company and am also facing this issue.

Besides suggesting to develop a centralized App to target all our different customers, Apple made the rediculous suggestion that we build a web app. They provide us with the technique to build apps but they want us to implement a website?

In every message they sent, they just copied and paste the 4.3 article and failed to give a viable suggestion. The last message from them was to contact them regarding this issue, but I've tried a couple of times (in their working hours) unsuccessfully.

As the other developers, we can't implement a centralized App for multiple customers. Each one want an individual App, an individual splash screen, an individual icon.

andrefjesus, when they called you, did they just stated and insisted on the 4.3 article or were they open to discussion?

Does creating multiple developer accounts solve this problem?

>Does creating multiple developer accounts solve this problem?

Two different things. One is apps that are made via a template or app generator(4.3 design), the other is a Developer Program account that belongs to the content owner.

Simply moving to an owned account won't help if the app is still made using a template/generator (4.3 design), etc. When both are an issue w/review, both have to be dealt with separately, I think.

> Each one want an individual App

That's where owned accounts come in. You can still do your thing as a dev, regarless of who owns the account.

Same here.

I have some apps that have some similar functions, but the final user are different for every app. In the last days, i have made updates (bug fixes) to some of those apps. And 3 of 4 updates got rejected. This is frustrating.

I believe that spam is something, but apps with similars sctructure is other. We make radio apps and all have similar structures, but each client is one indivudual client with your own content graphic and musical. This is not spam, and I belive that a lot of others cases is not spam too but are been afected by that generic ruller. Unbelievable Apple aply the ruller too all cases.

What kind of niche are your apps?
Are they native developed in the XCode editor?

We also have the same issue. We strongly believe that Apple enforces this rule in good intention but in the wrong direction. Appstore is full of clones of low value and this seem to cause extreme burden to App Review Team and the whole ecosystem. The templated/white label industry though has a lot of great examples where it would not work otherwise:

Example:

Smart City Apps: Applications that are contracted to several municipalities throughout the world to offer e-services to citizens like complaints, parking payment, notifications for deadlines etc. These apps rely on robust backends with a lot of functionality and communication with the app. They cannot get consolidated (every city needs it's own identity, would be funny to combine cities in USA and Thailand and Ukraine for example in one app), and they will eventually share mostly the same code. Some functions may be available to some apps some to others, but essentiatlly they will have a lot of common ground. But each app will target extremely different people (each city's citizens), will not have any other app that actually copies it (is the only municipality app out there) and the developer that builds it will need to be able to massively push updates in order to keep all users (citizens - large number) satisfied. This app, would easily fall in 4.3 rules or even 4.2.6 just because it has 5-10 modules that do the same thing for different people.

Restaurant Apps: For years now, there are 2 solutions regarding online food ordering: Marketplaces with large commissions and Stand Alone Apps for big companies that can afford them. Templating has given the ability to small restaurants to market their own business without the fear of losing clients due to competition. Their apps usually offer online ordering, history, offers, payment etc. Again, it would be silly to consider these apps "spam" just because they have the same architecture. They offer their services to completely different clientele, they market their app by themselves, they don't do keyword spam and most importantly they are used evey day by their users to order food. What better proof of value would anyone need? We don't speak for event apps that mey be launched only pre and on event dates and then get forgotten (while worthy events may get a lot of use even after that) but for a live system that constantly gets updated and provides a real service to users.

I strongly believe that Apple did a mistake here. They want to have the best in quality, maybe the proposals that their consultants offered to their BoD were not good enough, maybe they did their math and feel that they will get much more by enforcing that than by going to a softer resolution, but causing so serious problems to a large number of businesses is not the way a partnership works. And it is a partnership. We give money to Apple in order to be able to provide our apps to users. We consider Apple a partner and so we need Apple to respect our business.

Best

Theodore B.

Imperatus Ltd

I completely agree with you. We at Mobifitness make apps for fitness clubs and gyms. There are some companies that do the same and suffer from 4.2.6 and 4.3 as we do. Mindbody, Migymapp, Perfect Gym, Technogym (My Wellness Cloud), Yclients, etc. You can't make a consolidated app while your business model is b2b solutions but not lead generation. We have 200 apps now. Please Apple, take from us $20.000 annually and allow to stay within one account and publish the apps that help customers of gyms to communicate with their managers. Best regards.

Yes, they did a mistake here, but they are hard to see it and adjust. Is a kind of decision that they have taken and they think they can force everyone to accept it in the end, however the end result will not be what the developer wants to do and it is not what companies that hire developers want.

I'm want to know too.

I have around 100 apps in the Apple store and was develop using IONIC.

All the apps only change images, colors, payment method and preferences.

Our doubt is if the app was rejected by layout spam or ionic feature.

Thank you. We're in the same boat--dinged on 4.2.6 and 4.3.

We make software for trucking companies. Large trucking companies have their own app developers, accounts and marketing teams. Small to mid-size companies don't, but want to be as competitive as the big guys or else they're toast.

Our apps help those companies provide a level of service that their customers only expect from larger companies. The last thing they want is to be forced into some container app that screams "we're not as good as the big guys!"

While still struggle to find a solution for 4.3, knowing that some Apple employees might look into these forums, we have some thoughts which I believe holds true to many of the businesses affected by 4.3 to share:

1. Many of white label businesses are not only not-spamming the App Store but are serious enough to always keep their apps up-to-date, follow all the Human Interface Guidelines and make sure they always fix bugs
2. Many of our businesses are not extremely interested for the App Store presence; We could still live with hosting our links directly to the App Store for our clients to download, we are not particularily interested for search, therefore we don't really care to spam.

3. Each of our so-called "similar" apps may share a common flow (fleet management through a map with route details for brianm@MCLEOD, food ordering for our business etc) but the real service we offer is completely unique for each of our client and their end-customers. Unique products, unique offers, prices, stores, features (yes, features since not all stores allow e-payments, not all offer tracking through managed services etc, so features may vary from app to app) and they ony share a perfected flow which each of us has spent years in developing in order to make sure we offer each tiny detail in a way our clients want.

4. If our business is to offer say online ordering apps to e-shops, in our business lifetime we may have 30 to 50 to 100 clients. This number is not big enough to build a marketplace (a container app one would say) and also IS big enough to reach a point where you cannot offer 100 different apps from scratch (noone can do that).

5. We are not doing damage to the App Store. A common game that has been copied, is targeting the same users as tha original trying to steal the developers' idea in order to profit. We don't. Our clients are unique and their apps are the only ones for them in the App Store. We also cannot keyword-spam the App Store since we are mostly using the names of our clients in different capitalizations to make sure they are going to be found.

6. We are willing to suffer a big penalty (removal of our apps / account) if we are found to spam keywords.
7. We now offer our services amputated. We release apps for Android, Web and other platforms (native) and when our clients ask about iOS we have to say what is happening and how our service has been crippled because of an App Store Review Guideline.

8. We understand that App Review is a serious process for Apple and needs resources, but there are many white label apps that offer ordering in their functionalities and many of them also offer Apple Pay as a payment option. This can compensate a lot for the loss of revenue of free apps.

9. Low quality apps, are actually rejected from the users themselves. They may get some downloads but will remain for a very limited amount of time in the end users' devices.

10. There are many categories of apps where consolidation will work. Most of them are the ones that a developer tries to profit from them and create numerous copies to accumulate downloads, or apps that are useful only for a limited amount of time. Why isn't Apple focusing in these cases for consolidation?

11. A Service Provider Program, much like the Enterprise Program would be a good idea for Apple after strict screening of businesses who want to join. Most of us are willing to pay a generous annual fee for such an account in order to keep our businesses running as we designed them to run.

12. Why isn't Apple providing enough guide in order to help us comply? Serious businesses are willing to go to sensible depth and spend resources in order to be able to provide their services to our clients.

13. Progressive Web Apps (which is one of the "options" provided by Apple) is not yet an option for iOS and mobile Safari.

Working with Apple is a blessing and a curse, one great developer said to me a few days ago.

Just my two (more) cents in that 4.3 thing.