[giancarlostoro]

Apple seriously needs to make all internal coms about rejecting apps public to the person being rejected. I do mean all this way, when people blog about it, there's no more ambiguity and it can be assessed. Also, you can see if they're rejecting it for something they already approved of prior. It feels like some people doing the reviews dont look at prior history at all. Maybe they dont even get access to it, or maybe they dont want to do it. Let the applicant see their entire history, let them better clarify.

This is so embarassing to see every time.

[bhawks]

This type of chest beating principal lacks nuance, there are certainly reasons why a reasonable person would agree it is in Apple (or any marketplace operator) not to share rationale directly with the creator. The easiest example would be comms indicating that Apple is detecting malicious behaviors (spam, fraud, abuse, etc) in the app. Disclosing information what can (and implicitly what cannot be detected) is self defeating. There are literally hundreds of reasonable variations in these situations.

I think what is effective is that all violations where the creator is working in good faith to abide by guidelines should be treated with reasonable transparency about how the conclusion Apple came to was reached. What fraction of Apple devs are working in good faith? Obviously the vast majority. So therefore most rejections should have clear rationale.

[realusername]

They won't provide any rationale the same way a justice court in a dictatorship doesn't need to refer to actual laws to justify their decision.

The appstore process is arbitrary by design, to keep power inside the company.

[saagarjha]

I mean, even a court doesn't publish all the deliberation that goes into arriving at a decision. They prepare a final verdict and deliver it–while it would be interesting to see, we have reasons we don't post things like "juror 2 thinks what you did was barely legal".

[troupo]

Courts at least try to justify these decisions with supporting documents, evidence, and links to precedent. Apple just rejects, or approves, or approves and rejects and often cannot say why.

[saagarjha]

Sure. But I don't think them showing their internal discussions would help solve the problem here, because their internal discussion is likely to be inconsistent and poorly documented.

[jdiez17]

I downvoted you because you only emotionalized OP’s point without addressing the reply above.

[realusername]

I answered the reply above, they will never provide any answer because it's opaque by design. It's not an oversight, it's how it's meant to be.

Then it's not emotional, it's a rational analysis of what's going on, there's a lot of money at stake here for Apple.

[mschuster91]

> The easiest example would be comms indicating that Apple is detecting malicious behaviors (spam, fraud, abuse, etc) in the app. Disclosing information what can (and implicitly what cannot be detected) is self defeating.

So what, in a proper court of law all evidence has to be put up for review so that the court can make a proper decision, even if just on technicalities. In Germany, for example, you can get speeding tickets thrown out if you can show that the cops have put their radar in a wrong angle towards the street. Drug dealing trials have to leave out evidence if the accused cannot reasonably challenge them [1].

Now compare that to Apple, which in being the ultimate gatekeeper for access to the App Store for iOS and its iPad/Watch equivalents, currently acts as lawmaker, police, DA, judge and court enforcer at once, and its actions are directly affecting the livelihood of anyone wanting to publish an app on the App Stores - anyone from small indie developers to multibillion international conglomerates, and yes, sometimes spammers, scammers, fraudsters and other kinds of criminals.

And just like in the "real" world, it should not be one company all on its own who has that kind of power. Hence the EU got fed up and installed the Digital Markets Act.

[1] https://www.heise.de/news/EuGH-Nationale-Gerichte-duerfen-En...

[throwaway2037]

Post-2008, globally important financial institutions are required to submit private, internal risk reports to regulators. It would not always be prudent to make this information public, but it makes good sense for regulators to see it -- privately.

It seems like if we want to have "fair" duopoly app stores (Apple and Android), then we need a regulator who is fully embedded and integrated into the process, but can view all details of the decision, including ones that should legitimately stay private (security, etc.). To be clear, the regulator needs to have the final say on what will be private and not. Also, the regulator needs to be involved in the appeals process.

That said, I still think we need to allow multiple app stores on each platform. Meta is large enough to do it. Yeah, I know, that will get no love here. And, unfortunately, it probably means lower security for unsophisticated end-users.

[jncfhnb]

It should be illegal for them to prohibit an app on their store and alternative distribution. Triply so if it at all competes with them.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> It should be illegal for them to prohibit an app on their store and alternative distribution. Triply so if it at all competes with them.

My very amateur reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773883 is that it probably literally is (edit: in the EU, to be clear). It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

[jncfhnb]

Well it very simply is because the EU has demanded third party app stores

[lawgimenez]

I have the same weird Apple review experience a couple of years ago too. Sorry for hijacking this post. But every year Apple is just throwing random rejections with our app.

https://law.gmnz.xyz/2022/02/02/submitting-urgent-hotfix.htm...