[floatingatoll]

Apple considers 3 months their standard level of advance notice, with WWDC serving as your warning and the release of iOS in September as the go-live date.

However, in this case, they have ended up giving you 6 months and a courtesy reminder.

If you aren’t interested in maintaining your app annually, don’t publish apps on Apple’s store.

Whether or not their level of notice is enough, they’ve been consistent for years in this practice of 3 months notice for significant and breaking changes, and they seem comfortable compelling annual updates from developers. I would not expect them to care that 3 months is difficult in your circumstances, as they assume you’re prepared to maintain your app and proactively keep up with policy changes over time. It sounds like you did not attend to this year’s policy updates and may well have been out of compliance for months now. Fortunately, they offered a grace period rather than just refusing your next bugfix update. Lucky you!

(I am not sympathetic to your situation, because as a user of apps, I am exhausted of crappy apps and bottom-of-the-barrel behaviors from developers. I understand that others may feel otherwise, and that’s fine too, just as long as those feelings do not get in the way of being a responsive app developer.)

[murgindrag]

> If you aren’t interested in maintaining your app annually, don’t publish apps on Apple’s store.

That's exactly what I do. I avoid the app stores like the plaque.

> (I am not sympathetic to your situation, because as a user of apps, I am exhausted of crappy apps and bottom-of-the-barrel behaviors from developers. I understand that others may feel otherwise, and that’s fine too, just as long as those feelings do not get in the way of being a responsive app developer.)

I think the word here is 'entitled.' There are a few different groups here:

- Bottom-of-the-barrel scammers, whom I have no sympathy to

- Little kids and amateurs, who might want to put something out and move on

- Graduate students and research projects

- Little not-for-profits

- Internal-use small businesses and enterprise apps, where a they might be developed once and forgotten about for decades (yes, plural)

In my case, I don't need to have an app on the app store, and I don't care for Apple's behavior, so I don't have an app there. That hurts Apple (and you, if you're an iPhone user) more than it does me.

You're also confusing strictness with timelines. I'm all for super-strict policies. Just with:

- Backwards compatibility (e.g. grandfathering) of older apps

- Plenty of notice

[oauea]

Yet another developer-hostile apple policy. Amazing. You have to be crazy to stake your company on apple's goodwill at this point.

[midev]

If you think requiring the ability to delete your account is "developer hostile", you're exactly why this provision needs to exist. Apple is giving you six months to stop fucking your users. Sorry not sorry :\

> You have to be crazy to stake your company on apple's goodwill at this point

My company has an app on the app store. We do a few hundred million dollars in sales via the app. Are we crazy?

[floatingatoll]

If you could make an extra hundred million dollars by fucking over users, some would say you are crazy not to, yes. Opinions vary, but that's sort of the essence of it.

[oauea]

Nah, I think being forced to implement it within 3 months is hostile. I think Apple refusing to send announcements through the mail is hostile.

Apps are just a single frontend to a larger system, and Apple thinks they can dictate the workings of that entire system just because you want to let users access your system from an Apple device. It's bonkers.

Imagine microsoft going: "Microsoft edge will refuse to render your website unless there is a "delete account button". How would that make you feel?

[jamiek88]

One man’s developer hostile is another man’s customer friendly

[floatingatoll]

I feel like they should be a lot more up front and plainly spoken about the maintenance burden of publishing on the app store.

But I don't think it's particularly hostile. I think it's just that their focus on user experience requires them to accept the punishing annual cycle for developers.