Paragraph 4.2.6 in the App Store Review Guidelines for iOS 11.

Paragraph 4.2.6 says: Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected.

Can anybody explain, is this paragraph relates to White Label solutions?

Replies

Seems to fall squarely in 4.2.6's sights. No question.

I am upset that Apple has deemed that consumers and businesses should be denied mobile app solutions simply because the starting point was with a template.
If Apple continue down this road, they are pushing their consumers to turn on them and go Android so that they can get ALL the apps that are available.


This is akin to them deciding to scrub all electronic music from iTunes because it wasn't made with traditional pianos and guitars! Regardless of the final product and if consumers want it, they are just deciding they don't approve of the instruments. This is benefits no one.



As a consumer, I am disappointed that they are prohibiting useful and relevant apps from being available to ME, an Apple customer...for a completely arbitrary reason.

I work with schools, and regardless of how my apps are made and on what platform, they provide REAL and RELEVANT solutions that improve COMMUNICATION and PARTICIPATION...and for Apple to deny this solution to public schools is unfair and possibly not legal.

It's a big mistake...

Ah, right. The quality of educational software put out by companies that can't even bother to modify a standard template solution enough to differentiate it...


Feel free to complain all you want about Apple making you do more work to pass review. Just don't be surprised when you get laughed at.

I just wonder what is the measure of difference?

How Apple decide that these two apps are similar to one another and those two are not?

It's truly hard to make two educational or fitness apps based upon a single platform look absolutely different. I say more, it is not necessary because business processes are similar and unified.

It is ok about 4.2.6 but how can companies that provide actually useful service with a single platform avoid the sancsions?

what is this going after PhoneGap? Unity?

The platform I use has just turned off publishing to iOS, I'm devastated. We have a number of very popular community apps published from the platform, with employees etc. Really hoping the platform can work with Apple to fix this issue.

Same here. I have 150 apps in the app store from clients and employ people to manage and keep these apps up. I respect coders and I am sure you are compensated for your skills accordingly. To just simply turn this off with no notice is just plain wrong. Its not even about me or my business. I am diverse enough that I can adapt. Saying that you cannot use white label services is like telling the entire web world that wordpress is no longer accepting plugins that you didn't code.


If anything I would have created two stores. One for small businesses that could use the white lable programs and one for hard coded apps.

>Saying that you cannot use white label services is like telling the entire web world that wordpress is no longer accepting plugins that you didn't code.


That's a reach, I think. There is no comparison between those two models.

I don't know why people are overreacting - this is obviosuly based at all the people using templates / app generation software to simply mass produce 100's of identical apps that just differ by simple re-skinning (if that) and then just spamming the app store with endless clones in an effort to milk keywords.


The moment you add something "significant" to your app to make it a unique / bespoke experience then I doubt you'll have any issues!


Failing that - just keep calm and carry on and worry about it IF you're app get's rejected. If on the other hand you're an app store spammer just blindly copying the same game template 100 times and not changing a single line of code then we already have enough of your apps - thank you 🙂


Just my $0.02

Not quite. Legitimate white label app developers are being caught up in the middle too. As a classic example I've seen, making a cost-effective app for a local retailer. If you make lots of apps for different retailers, is that really "cloning to spam keywords"? Retailers get value, customers of retailers get vaule, and developers get paid. Apple is rejecting such apps.

I guess there are two scenarios:


1) the spammers generating many many repeat apps and filling the app store with redundant content

2) the apps that are customizeable to a specific use for which there are large families of such use. For example the local barber shop in CityTown or the August 31 - Rolling Stones event at the CityTown Arena.


Apple is saying 'no' to the 1st and is differentiating a business model for the second. If you are a barber shop or the next event you want your own app. But that's your business model, not Apple's. Apple sells apps and devices. Apple is making you be one entity within a host of similar entities. You can still be the 'CityTown' entry on the 'Barber Shop' app or the 'August 31 - Rolling Stones' entry for the 'CityTown Arena' app. The user downloads one app and gets to see all events and all barber shops. It's a choice. Sorrry.

You seem to be missing the big picture. Let's say that a company is producing a stand-alone application for hotel bookings. They built an enormous backend to support it and they release an app for each hotel that has a splash screen a room list with booking and a history. Even if this company was to custom build, design and maintain each app, would take 10-20 apps before they start using the same codebase. This is how development works. It's like banning Magento eshops from the Web because they use Magento code. If you were an entrepreneur except being a developer you would understand that offering to the market an alternative to trivago or booking is exceptional solution to many businesses that want to be able to work with their own apps. If you want to make this competitive, you have to streamline the maintenance and further development and this is good for all. You do all the work one time and you sync the changes to all your customers' apps. This means with native swift/obj-c code, native apis etc. I cannot stress enough how ridiculous is that the apps are going to get rejected because they all have 3 features on their tabbbar and the same name on them. Is there a real reason to ban that? They are different businesses, they cannot get "combined" since they are competitors and they are SMALL enough to not be able to build 100% custom apps and 100% custom backend for them. What is wrong with that? Is that considered spam or bad design? Let's get serious around here, shall we?

We're in the same boat! Apple is refusing our restaurant apps. They do not understand our business model! WE ARE NOT MAKING SPAM! My company develops delivery apps for restaurants, and all of them obviously have the same functionality, with few visual changes, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Our customers want so, do not want a single app container. They do not want it! is bad! not logical!

I agree, my app is not spam and localised, yet my development platform has been blocked from allowing me to make any further updates or changes.

Cray cray!