Apple Eases App Restriction, Publishes Review Guidelines

Much has been said about Apple’s stance in their closed App Store, and how the apps that are submitted to it are reviewed.  There have been many complaints by developers that Apple has rejected their apps for reasons they were not aware of.  Not to mention the fact that Apple recently banned third-party development tools from being used for apps that make it into the store.  Today that changes.

Apple has finally released it’s App Store Review Guide to tell developers exactly what not to do with their apps.  Many of the points could already be inferred, but there are some new rejection points including “apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them.”  So, it could be that we’ll see no more flashlights, or tip calculators.  It could pose an issue for the myriad of Twitter apps in the App Store that all essentially do the same thing, but offer different experiences and interfaces, which could make a huge difference to users.  There’s also “we have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted,” which could be very subjective decision. We could easily take out half of the games that we don’t find entertaining at all, but someone out there might find enjoyment from. {Engadget} While we’re definitely in agreement on not needing any more Fart apps, if that’s what consumers want, why limit their choices? After all, with Apple getting a portion of most app revenue, duplicate apps don’t exactly hurt the bottom line.

The document as a whole is very interesting, even if you aren’t a developer of any sort.  It’s written in a very friendly manner, in a way that you could imagine being penned by Steve Jobs, or someone within Apple trying to imitate a Jobs announcement.  The guidelines themselves aren’t too unreasonable.  Apple is understandably concerned for kids, since most parents would never enable parental controls.  It may be frustrating, but if you really need porn on your phone, there’s always Safari aka the portal to the world wide web of skin and sin.

Along with the App Store Review Guidelines, Apple has decided to lift the ban on third party developer platforms.  That means that those who want to use Adobe’s Flash to iOS app converter can now do so, as well as game developers who use platform such as Unity 3D.  This also explains why we were able to see the Epic Citadel app in the App Store, since Unreal 3 is a cross-platform graphics engine.  This means we could see more of those magazines that Adobe was working with to create iPad apps, and more graphically impressive games using the Epic’s Unreal 3, id Tech 5, and Unity engines. {Gizmodo}