[simias]

You make good points but IMO that's an Apple problem first and foremost, not an application designer problem. If an application doesn't follow the guidelines and breaks on some of the phones supported by the app store, then Apple should tell the application makers to fix it lest the app be removed.

Last week I defended the move by Apple to remove that "crab house" app because they're the custodians of their walled garden and get to enforce arbitrary standards of quality and safety on the behalf of their customers who bought into the ecosystem. With this same mindset I can only blame Apple here for failing to maintain the quality standard on some of their phone lineup.

So basically I'd frame this as "Apple failing to enforce the guidelines" instead.

[dmckeon]

Alternately, Apple could choose a different and non-binary way of curating apps. An app store with 4 or 5 scales of 0 to 9 scores: UX, privacy, cost/benefit, user reviews, etc. would be a lot more useful to me than a store with x00,000 apps all in an undifferentiated pile.

Even trying to find specific app from a specific vendor, while being sure to not get some lookalike evil clone from J. Random Hacker can be challenging.

[httpsterio]

Why? What if you're developing some app where you want to divert from the guidelines, you should be able to do that. Guidelines are just that, they're not rules.

Apps should follow some basic accessibility rules and be functional, but yij can in earnest say that you think that all games for example should follow the Apple design guidelines, can you?

[simias]

If not following the guidelines makes your app hard to use or glitchy on some of Apple's lineup, I don't see why you wouldn't expect Apple to reject the app. This reflect poorly on Apple because it makes it look that some of their devices are 2nd class citizens within their ecosystem.

They should follow the guidelines when not doing so causes usability issues. If your games is usable on all devices then obviously there's no problem.

[tinus_hn]

There’s a point there but it is a difficult balancing act. Some of the largest third party apps, like Google Maps, feature the Google Material Design that is alien on iOS. There is no way to force Google to use an iOS design. Would it be a smart move from Apple to ban Google Maps from the iPhone?