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

When did you get a phone call Lena? I think recently they have stopped telling the exact reason for 4.3.

I got the 4.3 rejection for this app. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1272669652?ls=1&mt=8

This app is a law reader app. I have spend full 3 months to develop this. It also built on several years worth developing resources. I released it a month ago as an updated version of the existing app, which had over 1500 good users' reviews. It was by far the best app compared to similar apps from other developers. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id916069107?ls=1&mt=8 It is very handy app for law students and practitioners.

The first several updates were fine, but suddenly I got 4.3 rejection on Oct 28. And the reviewer refused to say the exact reason. Only a template reply. No proper reply, no phone call. Yesterday I made a "container app" as they suggested and uploaded it.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/z26xxfapsk56ant/Screen%20Shot%202017-11-08%20at%207.46.21%20AM.png?dl=0

This includes my other app https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/20th-industrial-property-law-commentary-reader/id1217317638?ls=1&mt=8

Of course I don't know which apps should be contained in the app because they don't tell the exact reason at all.

These are two different apps, targeted for different users and purposes, but they are both law apps and aesthetically similar.

I also removed ALL OF MY LAW APPS from sale, including the previous version app.

I got 4.3 rejection AGAIN this morning.

I don't know what to do. I don't have any more law apps to consolidate. Do they want me to combine a calendar app and a handwriting app, and a law app into a single app?? I'm making iOS utility apps for almost 10 years. I'm not a spammer or copy cats. I don't even make a game. All of my apps are utility apps and I have been trying to be helpful for users. This is a very serious situation for all the small developers.

I'm experiencing very weird situation now.


• Yesterday morning, my app finally got approved.

• I have changed a little bit, re-submitted it as an update yesterday.

• The app got rejected again this morning.


[8 Oct] Build 7534 - Rejected because of Guildeline 4.3 breach

[9 Oct] Build 7591 - Approved

[10 Oct] Build 7692 - Rejected because of Guildeline 4.3 breach


The differences between these builds are

• Bitcode (off for 7591, on for other two)

• Firebase Core/AdMob, Fabric, Crashlytics (I removed them in 7591. Other builds contained these frameworks)

As well as screenshots and store descriptions.



When it was rejected, it was rejected super fast like one minute. When approved, it took 30 minutes.


I'm suspecting any one of Firebase Core/AdMob, Fabric, Crashlytics, or the combination of all of these, made the Review Bot think the app was made from a template.

Or, it was just a coincidence, or the reviewer showed a temporary mercy for build 7591.


I'll keep on checking.

I finally got a call back, and spent almost an hour on the phone. Not much was resolved, but they asked for a paper explaining how I plan to consolidate my apps, or in my case, why they can't be consolidated. I emailed the paper to the reviewer, and the next day most (but all) of my apps were back in review and then were ready for sale. I asked about the apps that are still rejected and told the review team is reviewing them and will replay soon. What a hassle and a waste of time. If you have not received a phone call I suggest you contact Apple through as many channels as possible until you get your call.

I just had a look at your apps, they seem very high standard and clean and I am pretty sure they UI details are very original.


This really shows how the app review team is incompetent with regards to reinforcing these guidelines, they are just taking things out of context now.

Perhaps they want to comibne your "Law" app with your "eLaws and IP Law Container App".?

That's the only thing i can think of.

I must say, while Apple's original intention with cleaning up the app store was good, I think they are now making more mistakes by killing off more innocent devs than actually killing of real spam apps.

Did you receive any other feedback after that? What did they ask or argue on the phone? What did you write in the paper? Did they say if this means you should request a phone call and submit a paper everytime you submit/update an app for review or does it create an expcetion for your account or at least for the app?


My company creates apps for churches and we are having the same problem. Each church wants its own app with its own brand, name, colors and visual identity but all of them need the same features (articles, musics, calendars, events and others). Because of that our apps are being rejected with the 4.3 topic justification.


The main problem is that our clients (the churches) do not have any interest on having a single app with data from all the churches and a random visual identity - like Apple suggests in the review. They want their brand in the App Store but also at a minimum price. Our product offers exact that, but now with this new approach, Apple is killing our business model, frustrating our clients and disturbing our apps final users (the church members) that may lose the facilities the app brings.


We have already submitted responses to the reviews;

We also tried creating a new account without a single reference to our main account in the name of one of our clients (name of the church).

Both attempts resulted in the same 4.3 text review.


Any information that you can provide us will be very helpfull because we are desperate.

Apple reviewers are just taking the 4.3 guideline out of context these days.


Your Church app(s) is a perfect example of how this guideline fails.


Main thing is the searchability. Each country, each state, each city probably has multiple churches, one person who goes to, say, Michigan state , Midland Pentecostal Church would probably simply search michigan church on the app store.

But if all church apps in the country is under one app he / she will get no search results since the developer just can't fit all the states in the keywords...

>she will get no search results since the developer just can't fit all the states in the keywords...


Interested in where you got your insider info on how app store search works....lots of questions you might be able to help with, thanks.

I wholly agree.


It's because they have to review hundreds upon thousands of apps per week, and how are they going to catch all the spam as individual reviewers? The task is nearly impossible, so they cast the net wide using an algorithm that detects spam or clones, and innocent devs get caught up in the web in the process.


While I agree it's good that Apple is cleaning up spam, I fear this new guideline is actually doing more damage than good, and legit devs will be impacted in the process, and eventually focus on other platforms as a result.


This guideline is very time consuming and costly to many indies, and does not make it worthwhile to pursue app development with Apple. Apps that were a huge gamble before, are an even bigger gamble now.

My app is getting approved. There are things that I have learned so far.


• My app "Law" can download 8000 laws from the Japanese Government website. I would say it was a spam if I have released 8000 independent apps for each law. But the actual app is made for general purposes for law students and practitioners.

However, the app was rejected because of the other app "IP Law Commentary book reader", which is a specialised for reading and referencing intellectual property law PDF published by Japan Patent Office. (I don’t still know the actual rejection reason because they didn't answer any questions.)

They are both law apps and they have similar functionalities, but the commentary reader app is made for a very specialised purpose. Combining them (which I had to do) reduces user's experiences. It's like combining Safari and iBooks just because they are both reading apps. The review team don't understand anything about laws and how apps are actually used. They just decided just by their appearances and decided that they had to be a single app because they “look similar”.

These two apps use similar UI parts. Superficially they look similar, the core logics are very different. Target users are different, the purpose of the apps are different.


• When they say “your app provides the same feature set as many of the other apps you've submitted to the App Store", "many of other apps" can be a single app. I don't know how they decide they are "the same", but I guess they determine by their appearances, if they share the same class names, etc.


• They never reply, they never tell detailed rejection reasons, they never tell what to do. They just send template messages. App Review Board never replies.

I don't know why they don’t answer, but this simply increases their jobs.


• "Another app" that has the same feature set must be removed from sale to pass the review.

Thanks a lot, I'll try your suggestion with bitcode and metadata (I don't use admob etc.).


Do you have any more tricks to share?


My experience: After couples of attemps to make apple approve my app, I've tried to create a new separate dev account for one of my apps, and I again got 4.3 and message saying "identical apps".


So my question is, how apple bot spots identical or simular apps and what could we do to pass thro this algorythm, at least on a separate account. If fair review doesn't work, we should at least find a workaround...

Guys, if you have enough resources there's still another way: you could create separate account for each of your apps (would work fine for white label and similar business models).

As i have said above, I've tried that way and also got 4.3 rejection, so our aim now is to figure out how apple's review algorithms find identical or similar apps and how we could pass through it. We should find a way to confuse/obfuscate code and app's structure, so the bot can't identify copies.

If there's no fair review, we should find our own way to make it fair. I understand that this method would help those who just spam on AppStore, but at least that'll attract apple's attention to our problem and problem in its algorithm

With all due respect, I don’t believe that “finding a way around the algorithm” is going to be a feasible, long-term solution. Not to mention, it’s very deceptive.


I would much rather be transparent with Apple, and try to find a solution with them vs finding a way around their system.


One issue we have run into most recently is customer backlash. We’ve had a few customers complain about some of the apps we deleted off the store, that they purchased and they are not happy campers to say the least.


Out of the 10 or so customers that complained, 2-3 of them threatened to ditch their iPhones or iPads, and move toward purchasing an android tablet. They were pretty livid about losing access to updates on some of our apps. We told them, those apps exist on ”other stores” but we had to consolidate apps with the new guidelines.


On some level, this must be concerning to Apple If customers are leaving the platform.


What happens with the customer backlash across the gaming genre, government apps, school apps that are now contained & customers no longer have access to those apps? I’m sure most of them will stick with the phones they are familiar with, but we’ve had a few tell us they were thinking about switching to android after hearing this news.


Thoughts anyone?

Masatoshi,


You said in one of your ealier posts that


I also removed ALL OF MY LAW APPS from sale, including the previous version app.

I got 4.3 rejection AGAIN this morning.


Yet, you were somehow able to get through the review process and get approved later. What exactly did you do differently next time around? Did you remove ALL your apps from sale and then went through the approval again?


I got the following rejection


Design 4.3

Thank you for your resubmission. However upon further review we continue to find that your photo taking apps are very similar. We understand that these apps are not exactly the same. However, apps that provide the same or similar feature set is not appropriate for the App Store.


I removed all of my photography apps except for one. Submitted that for review and I still got the same Design 4.3 rejection. So that did you do different in your case? Whatelse did you end up removing? I have no idea whatelse they want me to do? I have no photography app left after removing all. Is it a timing thing? Remove from sale all apps, wait 2 days and then submit the app for review?


Good god apple you **** ****!!