Apple's Review team cuts and pastes useless canned responses.What do I do?

[ian_cyw]

We've submitted an iPhone app: LiveLockscreen (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/live-lockscreen-video-live/id510241197?mt=8)

The app allows you to play videos in the background together with your music. The first version of the app was approved, but since then, Apple has not allowed us to do any updates. We've had 6 rejections over the past 2 months, the last 3 with the canned response of "no audible content is played".

This is clearly not true, the app allows you to select a song from your playlist and watch a video together with it:

<p>http://youtu.be/yDdTBvXfMGs<p>

Apple's cut and paste rejection (3 rejects with same response):

"We found that your app uses a background mode but does not include functionality that requires that mode to run persistently. This behavior is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.<p>We noticed your app declares support for audio in the UIBackgroundModes key in your Info.plist, but no audible content is played when the application is in the background. While your intention may have been to provide this functionality, at the time of review, we were not able to play background audio for your app.<p>As indicated in the iOS Application Programming Guide:<p>"This key is intended for use by applications that provide audible content to the user while in the background, such as music-player or streaming-audio applications."<p>Therefore, it would be appropriate to provide audible content to the user while the app is in the background or remove the "audio" setting from the UIBackgroundModes key."

[ian_cyw]

Update: We just got a call from Apple developer relations explaining that all apps which makes use of animation on the lockscreen are not allowed. Well, at least a definite no saves us development time in trying to iterate further on this.

[zomgbbq]

So, I'd like to give a helpful response, so don't get mad when I say this but it seems to me that Apple's response isn't canned here. It looks like they've identified that you've declared the use of certain features, such as UIBackgroundModes, but when they tested it, the app did not work. What seems likely is that although you probably thoroughly tested your app, whatever configuration it is being tested in has exhibited a bug where the audio is not playing correctly. I have had many bugs before where only a certain tester was able to reproduce the problem. I'm also aware that Apple doesn't like it when problems like this are taken public so be careful. Good luck and I hope you get your updates approved soon.

[ian_cyw]

Thank you for your comments and suggestion. I'm aware that Apple doesn't like this too, and am only asking for help because of 6 rejections in 2.5 months. It's hard when all you get is a cryptic message that hasn't changed in 3 rejections regardless of what you do. And because some crap app that is a horrendous copy of ours is sitting pretty at number 2.

It does make sense that it is possible that Apple's configuration is having problems. I'll try to test it with more devices over the weekend. Thanks!

[allwein]

When you submit your app, have you provided any tutorials or instructions on how to enable music in the background for your app? There's a place on the submission form for submitting special instructions or usernames/passwords for the testers to use.

If you're getting repeated failures and all you're doing is resubmitting without addressing any of their concerns, of course you're going to get rejected again.

[ian_cyw]

Yes, we've put in detailed information, including a demo video.

More on the background of the app. When we submitted our first update, we had no background music, and Apple's comment was true. We then made the change to incorporate background music and have a music selector to play music from the playlist.

However, no matter what we did afterwards, Apple has always been posting the same response "copy and paste". There's no engagement or changes despite us fixing the problem and posting demo videos with the sound and such.

[graupel]

How about appealing to the App Review Board? https://developer.apple.com/appstore/contact/appreviewboard/...

[ian_cyw]

We've tried this too. But beyond the standard "We'll contact you shortly", nothing has happened after weeks (3-4 weeks).

[graupel]

Sorry, that's rough.

[ian_cyw]

And there's a terrible copy of our app (that doesn't even work), that's sitting at number 2 in paid entertainment! Argh.

http://appshopper.com/entertainment/live-wallpaper-your-devi...

[duskwuff]

With an average rating of 1 1/2 stars. Ouch!

Bonus: one of their other apps ("Dot Lock Protection") has a one-star rating, probably because what it claims to do is impossible. :P