Apple store rejection advice

[Omadan]

Yes let's all send pics of our sexy bodies and give em to crivens. We then let crivens
Make the app. Then apple will know who they are messing with

[Crivens]

Nice. My day job is in a building with hundreds of programmers. I think perhaps that idea might not work... Heh but yeah we were considering a bloke version. Dunno now though...

Will try the appeal with the same hooters question tomorrow I think.

Cheers

[XanthorXIII]

Try making the lock transparent and maybe switch the pictures.

[Slydog]

Actually, the locks may be the problem, as somebody mentioned they appear to be hiding inappropriate content.
The reviewer would have to actually unlock EACH level before he could approve your app, maybe.

Another option for the locked levels would be to just have them darkened and the unlocked ones full brightness.
At least the reviewer could fully see what the photos are.

[spicypixel]

My immediate subconscious thought was that the lock was obscuring the content at first glance, after that I thought there's nothing wrong so it may be that the app reviewer thought much the same and scratched it at that point? It may be advisable as other have mentioned to make the lock semi-transparent but I guess half the fun of these apps is discovery so a tricky one really.

Amusing to submit the same app with hooters pictures to see if it's accepted j/k lol I guess the guidelines are in place for app but it's down to the personal opinion of the reviewer at the time of testing. If they're less experienced they may not want to put their head on the block accepting an app to have the decision bite them in the ass later.

[Slydog]

But the important question is where do you find women that are willing to pose in bikinis, and that don't want any money for it!?!?   
Good sources for free photos.  Imaging someone is playing your iPhone app and then notices his girlfriend is one the the photos! ha

[XanthorXIII]

Better yet, darken the image, make a small lock and put it to the bottom right. Then when it unlocks, have the graphic brighten and change to an unlocked lock.

[Ian Price]

I'm guessing they don't employ QA testers much above Burger King staff level and just put it through to the app review board (their manager who has at least a little bit of brains is my guess).

They still beat HP/WebOS reviewers. My Minesweeper app "Mined Out!" was rejected because the reviewer thought that you should be able to click on a revealed number. I then had to wait two weeks for it to get through the review process again because SHE fecked up. Annoyed? Not much!

[Sokurah]

It's hard getting a straight answer it seems.   

I would SO take it as a challenge - "why can't I get permission when [these] people can?"
...and when they say [insert generic standard no-ish faffle here) - "WHY...explain to me why - when -> [they] can"

[Crivens]

Imaging someone is playing your iPhone app and then notices his girlfriend is one the the photos

Heh yeah. Although I tried to make sure I only selected ones that were staged shot rather than some bloke taking pictures of people. There was one for example that looked like Kim Kardashian. And it was. Then I noticed I had wandered off the creative common path and the licence rights were pretty tied up. At the end of the day though there is nothing really stopping someone taking a picture of something, giving creative commons licence (apparently you cannot then undo the action), and putting it out there. What are the rules if he posted someone famous or a dodgy picture the person has agreed to? Way I see it is they are there with a creative common licence, meaning I can use them for free, and if anyone complains I can always remove that picture. Most of them come from a Bikini contest in the mid 90's so half of them are probably grandmothers by now Damn fine grandmothers...

Hmm, good points about the locks guys. The reviewer did not mention the other pictures, only the level select screen. And it would be trivial to make the lock tiny and then darken the locked ones a little (the option screen actually has the pictures fully shown as it happens) so they can see what the pictures are. Would be stupidely easy to hide porn though if you think about it though. I mean they obviously don't have access to all the media (I used a shoebox, and even though that is really easy to get into, there are loads of other ways of encrypting the data (eg. just use DATA statements and a simple encryption would be to reverse everything I guess)). Heh, would make you amazingly famous in about 5 minutes, but totally get shut out almost immediately.

Got to be careful here though. Don't want to piss off Apple really. The more I think about it the more I agree with the lock explanation. Stupid really, but fair enough. *BUT* it would be nice if they would explain a bit better! I could have changed that right there and then! An attachment of one of my pics, and saying it doesn't conform to standards is like guesswork! ie. zero professionalism. I would be out of a job if I acted like Apple (and I have worked as a programmer in the same job for 16 years).

I submitted an appeal yesterday basically saying the same thing about the Hooters app. Can you instead submit a new version straight away while you wait for the appeal (ie. change the locks)? Or should I wait for their answer? Also the resolution center that is used with a rejection is pretty straightforward, not bad, you can see the messages back and fore etc, but what about the appeal? I sent the message and cannot see if it really has been sent or been queued or what. Seems like a bit of a grey area compared with app submission etc. Anybody been through an appeal before? Do you know what happens next? Also Apple sites appear to be dog slow so I don't know if something would have appeared later or what not. Annoying...

Talking of slow sites; is it just me or is the GLB forum really slow in the last few days? Now again just freezes for a while on a request. Refresh and it's normally fine again...

Thanks guys! Hopefully your comments will allow my cheap smutty app to live! And now off to browse Kays catalogue.... 

Cheers

[MrTAToad]

Cant say I've had slow website access

[Crivens]

Ok, just to update everyone, basically I just got a phone call from the Apple review board. They aren't going to proceed with the app, and the woman said it was because the images were not suitable. When I enquired how come the other app (Hooters) was basically the same thing, they thanked me and said thank you for raising this app to our attention and they will now look into that one. Oops...

So basically everything we have heard about Apple being massively inconsistent, strange, slow, and as uptight as the bible belt (Kays catalogue should be banned if they ever do an app as their underwear section makes my app look like Humpty Dumpty books) is pretty much true. Nice...

What have we learnt here? Don't assume anything on the store is actually going to be an example in what is and isn't allowed. If it was allowed before then either they dropped the ball then, have some minute reason why yours is different (and won't tell you why), or you just raised a flashing red light to them to ban the existing app because the original reviewer was obviously an idiot or drunk (can't think of another reason) and couldn't follow their rules at the time. It couldn't possibly be anything like *cough*corruption*cough*....

Anyway, I'm happy enough. Cost me a few hours work really. No biggie. Would have been annoyed if original app was stopped. Just bewildering really.

I'm slightly worried though as my next app is a football app. And even though there are loads on there, you never know when they will decide to stop it because I use a named club or somesuch. Might be easier to go for lame madeup names eg. Manchuster United, and allow the player to edit them. Lame I know, but hey, better safe than sorry...

Right time to upgrade my Android tablet to at least 2.2 and hopefully release it instead onto the Android market once GLB gets the update to do Android stuff. Or buy a Palm Pre. What's the market like there? Anyone have good experiences?

Cheers

[Kitty Hello]

I know of someone with a "Love Dice" app for WebOS and he's doing sone 20$ a day IIRC.
Hard temptation to stay clean, here.

[Crivens]

Love dice? Hmmm. $20 a day? Really? Grief that is like astronomical compared to what I've got in the past. Wow, I thought it was a much smaller market...

Palm Pre is WebOS is that right? And it's really just a matter of changing the compiler target (and handling resolution obviously) and that's it? Does it cost much to develop for it or is it free to release onto their app store?

Cheers

[Ian Price]

$20 a day on Palm. Seriously? I've sold bugger all - about 64 sales for B'lox! and 77 for Mined out (if you believe the stats). My Free apps have been downloaded in their thousands though.