4.3 Design Guidelines - Apple please reconsider how this is enforced.

We have spoken to many developers in previous months who have run into issues with the new 4.3 Design Guidelines rules & had their apps rejected, seemingly by a bot, or in general, by a reviewer because of similarities to previous apps. They have been asked to combine their similar apps into one container app.


We understand why Apple is finally cracking down and doing this. They are trying to clean up the Appstore of clones, useless junk & other spam apps.


In the process however, this has seemingly hurt indie developers who are not using templates, and design their own games from scratch. We've spoken with several developers, many who pride themselves in creating unique content such as educational & games for children, receieve these notices with no method to appeal, and auto-responses making the same blanket statement, ending in frustration for the developer & wasted months in development time.


They are asked to combine their apps or games into one "single container app" to reduce the clutter in the Appstore. While the idea of this sounds great in theory, it is flawed in exection, simply because some apps and games are not meant to be combined.


Take a first grade educational app for instance. Say you program a math game that caters to 1st grade kids. Then you use that engine or framework to develop a math game for 3rd or 4th graders. Combining these games would make no sense from a marketing perspective, and from the perspective of a parent who is purchasing the app for their child who needs a math game for first graders only . We have actually spoken to parents and customers in an email survey, who said they would not like this change, and it would make it more difficult for them to find the app they need to install for their child's specific age group. They have asked us to not combine these apps that they have stored on their device, as they like to have separate applications and games for each of their children, in their respective age groups & content supplied.


This is just ONE example or highlight of how this actually ruins the end user experience. Forcing developers to combine apps into one container app does not benefit customers, especially those that are accustomed to having the one single app for it's functionality and purpose. That applies to educational games, tools that target a specific market group, or diet apps that target specific dietary needs and so forth.


Apple - We beg you. Please reconsider this new guideline, and don't be so heavy handed with the rejection notices. We understand the need to clean up the Appstore, and provide a better experience for users, & remove spam, but taking the guidelines this far is not the way to clean up the store.


We feel this is hurting the end user experience, and many of our customers love having the single application or game, rather than one larger bloated file installed on their device.


Don't force developers into combining apps into one container app. It does not make sense for the end user experience, and does not make sense from a marketing or distribution perspective whatsoever, and actually hurts the end user experience. Combining 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade math games does not equate to a better store experience, just as combining diet apps from various diets, does not help that person who is trying to get healthy, & wants a very specific diet app tailored to their specific needs.


Please reconsider revising this guideline, as I don't feel we are alone in this battle.


We appreciate the ability to be able to publish games to one of the best Appstores on the market. We hope that Apple revises these guidelines, so things aren't so heavy handed and difficult for indies, who are already struggling to make ends meet in this very competitive marketplace.


Sincerely,


Appstore developer

Replies

One year we had developed an application for eCommerce to start to sell them with a specific set of changes to our many customers.

I'm in shock, our first 2 applications have already been rejected with reference to "Design - spam".


What differences can be in eCommrce application?

Every application has similar activity - category, product list, product card, shopping cart, checkout.

What a unique design it is possible to come up with a common business process?

I feel it is less about what differences are inside the application, and more about Apple wanting to reduce the clutter in the Appstore.


I am all for reducing the number of junk apps, clones, flappy games, and spam, but to outright tell all developers that they have to combine several games into a container app, some of which just don't belong together is overstretching this guideline.


Apple needs to soften up the 4.3 guidelines, and allow developers to continue to publish apps that are branded toward the specific target market. eg: diet apps should not be combined. I as a customer would not want to download an app with multiple varying diets when I'm only looking for one specific one.


Same with travel apps - if I want an app that caters to Paris traveling, I do not want NYC, Rome, London, Milan, & other cities in a bundle.


The idea behind the agreement is well intended, but it's taken too far, without consideration for marketing & other things that come into play with the Appstore.


So the topic is really less about what is inside the app, and more about taking the Developer's freedom to market their game to a specific target group or audience. That is now being dictated by the Appstore, which I feel is very unfair toward developers who are not spamming or cloning games, but rather, providing a specific audience with the exact app they are looking for. After all, marketing is 100% of what makes an app successful these days. The gold rush days of the appstore are over, so if you don't have marketing, you don't have a specific target market in mind, then you don't have any reason to release an app in the first place. And that is what scares us the most as indie developers.


If these rules are not amended, then we will have to change the course of our business entirely, and it will be very unfortunate to our existing customers, who are already livid with us over these changes, none of which we have any control over.

We are in the same boat but your setup is exactly what the problem is with bloat. You can have a single app with InApp purchases. That actually makes sense. In our case we have similar apps with different content per competitor and separate businesses. Putting both of them in a container app makes no sense. This is what Apple is not distinguishing from a business standpoint. We also make no money off of this, it's business value to the small business that now they can't afford because of these extreme rules.

>Apple needs to soften up the 4.3 guidelines


Be careful what you wish for - keep in mind that every time that happens, bad actors (watch out for them to come here to complain & spam yet again) drive trucks thru the result.


Some of your ire goes towards those posers, as well, where Apple is yet again forced to react to schemes where the only goal is to game the process and sadly help ruin the store for well behaved devs in the process.


Good luck in any case.


Ken

We are the same. Our apps are individual to each trade and now they reject them. Our clients want their customers to find them by name and not in a container with all the businesses of their competence. The problem is that Apple's answers are automatic and it is impossible to replicate. We hope you will make some changes to this new policy shortly.

Hi Fellow devs,


Is there any solution on this yet. six apps of our company got rejected in the last week and the message says the same? Very desperate to know if anyone got a different solution from apple other than using a "container" app.

I would also be interested to know if anyone had any success with this. We make apps for small businesses. Each app is branded to the business and the content is for the business. It is an ecommerce app for small businesses. The layout is similar across apps as we share a lot of the code but we try to personalize them as much as possible.


I cant see how putting them into one app will work as in most cases it is direct competitors. So our customers are naturally not going to like this. They take pride in their own apps and love to market them to their customers. It doesnt seem to make sense how this rule can come in for things like ecommerce based apps for small businesses.

>They take pride in their own apps


You mean under your account, tho...correct? Or do they have an owned account and simply got caught up in the templated app ban?

We've been caught up in this as well and its incredibly frustrating. We have an app through our event registration vendor. We're being told that we need to have multiple events per year within the app, five or more, for Apple to approve it as a stand alone app that we would deploy on our own. I would absolutely be okay with deploying it on our own if it had a chance of actually resolving the issue.


For us the problem is our app is for a single, large, conference that happens once a year, a major event for the industry it represents. We go through our registration vendor because it uses the existing integrations we've developed with that system and other systems we use. What I don't understand is why its okay for Apple to have a separate app for WWDC which happens once a year, but is requiring anyone else to have five separate events a year within an app for it to qualify as a standalone.


This just seems like an extremely heavy handed approach that provides a less transparent user experience.

Current User Process:

  1. Register to attend event.
  2. Attend event, search store for event by name.
  3. Download app, enjoy event, onsite beacons and socialization functionality.


New User Process:

  1. Register to attend event
  2. Attend event, try to find app in store by event name, fail.
  3. Try to find event link in email or program book.
  4. Search for name of event vendor.
  5. Download vendor app.
  6. Download event within vendor app, enjoy event, onsite beacons and socialization functionality.


As it stands our vendor is telling us we have no real option with them, and from what I have been reading it appears our only choice might be fully custom development at a heavy cost to both create and maintain.


It is hard to me to see how this is really beneficial for anyone.

>What I don't understand is why its okay for Apple to have a separate app for WWDC which happens once a year, but is requiring anyone else to have five separate events a year within an app for it to qualify as a standalone.


I was buying what you were selling until you said that...

Hello .. Good evening! We also went through this problem, we talked via ticket and phone with Apple. They are really blocking the White Label model, impossible to continue in this model. In our case, we opted for the "container app", we were able to develop and it was approved. Customers accepted the change.



In summary there are 3 ways to solve rejection 4.3:



WEBAPP

- WebApp would be accessed by browser and so would not be in the AppleStore;

- It's good for B2B and would have a link to give internal use access.



CONTAINERAPP:

- All in one app;

- Each company would have its logo inside this app, however it would not be heavy because only the data of the companies that the user selects is lowered.

- Each company has its data separately.



NEWAPP:

- Have a different application for each company without being of the same template / whitelabel format. It has to really be a unique application, especially in design.

You basically hit the nail on those points. However, I had others say they created a seperate account and it worked, however a seperate account did not work for me.

Hello good day! According to Apple, creating separate accounts will not solve the problem. Even if it is initially approved, we may have trouble in the future. We really evaluated this option, but in this moment of indecision we chose not to take the risk.

>According to Apple

I'd love to see that statement, if you can quote a direct response, thanks.

>creating separate accounts will not solve the problem.


If the problem is templated/canned/cloned app generation, yes, I agree. Those are two things and changing one doesn't fix the other.

Basically, the only resolution to this would be if Apple were to offer some type of new developer tier or Enterprise account.


This will help weed out the devs that push out junk apps & clones using templates from various white label shops, and only serious, business app developers would be able to pay the premium of $1,000 per year, let's say, for an Enterprise developer account. The $1,000 per year would deter those that are looking to pay only $99 to get in, and push a bunch of spam.


They are still bound by the rules of the guidelines, but in terms of pushing client content, & other applications like radio apps, YMCA apps, and other business apps would be allowed, so long as it's marketed toward that specific group, and not spamming the store with repeat clones.


It feels like, in the process of Apple cleaning up the store, a lot of legitmate developers, those that have run a business for years, are damaged in the process. There needs to be some solution or compromise to this, for legitimate devs.