[ed_mercer]

Submitting apps to the App Store is one of the more frustrating things in life. Reviewers are lazy, random and don’t do any homework. You roll a dice and hope you don’t have any issues. Couple that with a bloated Xcode that still hasn’t learned anything from VS Code, long compile times, long processing times, bullshit compliance checkboxes and the time-consuming filling out of information of what your app is all about. Oh, and you can do the same again for Google’s Play Store!

No thanks, I’ll stick with PWAs.

[skissane]

What’s needed is for regulators to step in. Create an independent government-run tribunal to which app store review decisions can be appealed by the developers, and legally mandate Apple/Google/etc to obey its rulings. Maybe the EU will do it.

If the EU mandated it other jurisdictions would likely follow. Even if they didn’t, you’d likely just be able to incorporate an EU subsidiary, then resubmit the app in the subsidiary’s name, and then lodge the appeal in its name if the submission still gets rejected.

[pjlegato]

Allowing government bureaucrats to oversee the app store review process seems like quite possibly the only single thing that could make it even slower, more frustrating, and more arbitrary than it is now.

[skissane]

> Allowing government bureaucrats to oversee the app store review process seems like quite possibly the only single thing that could make it even slower,

How could it possibly make the review process slower? Such a tribunal would have zero role to play in reviewing the app. It only steps in if the developer wishes to appeal a review rejection. At which point it is reviewing, not the app itself, but rather the reasonableness of the review process which lead to the rejection of that particular app.

Also, I wouldn’t suggest government bureaucrats as appointees. My uncle, who is a lawyer, used to sit on one of these government tribunals in Australia (not reviewing app store rejections, reviewing rejections of applications for refugee status). He was not a bureaucrat and nor were any of the other appointees. The government advertised for lawyers in private practice to apply for appointment to the tribunal, and he applied, and he was appointed. His background was in criminal defence not government bureaucracy. And it was a part-time role, so he was still carrying on his private criminal defence practice while he sat on it. It is considered a quasi-judicial role (not technically a judge and not having the same prestige or qualifications or privileges as a judge, but performing some of the same functions)

[tshaddox]

A government tribunal is probably one of the very few ways to make the experience worse than it already is.

[dghlsakjg]

I live in Canada where there are Ombudspeople and tribunals for many dispute resolution processes. Getting them involved usually lights a fire under a company's ass in my experience.

it is far preferable to hashing everything out in court (or not, if you aren't swimming in cash).

I wish the lawmakers would just step in and regulate gatekeeping on devices, rather than reviewing every dispute. I would be perfectly happy with the same model they use on my macbook for unapproved binaries. If I download a non-approved app, just let me know that it is donwloaded from the internet/not approved safe by Apple, and let me run it if I so choose.

[throwaway2037]

Australia also has a consumer protection bureau. It does exactly the same when you complain -- lights a fire under the ass of the maker. There are so many posts from Ozzies here about being "saved" by that bureau from a bad product.

[skissane]

> Australia also has a consumer protection bureau

Australia does have relatively strong consumer protection laws. There is both a federal agency that does consumer protection and competition law (the ACCC, roughly equivalent to the US FTC) and also each state has an agency (my state’s is called Fair Trading NSW)

> There are so many posts from Ozzies

Random aside, I’d never thought about it before but it’s true - as someone pointed out on the Assange post, we Australians generally don’t call ourselves “Ozzies”, nowadays the standard spelling is “Aussies”

[throwaway2037]

Hat tip about "Ozzies". I'll make a note!

[curiousdeadcat]

HN. Very free market. Except Apple. The cognitive dissonance, and entitlement is crazy.

Even funnier after years of "Apple knows best". God forbid anyone buy an Android phone. No, apparently folks would rather force their abuser to be slightly nicer and then stay in that toxic relationship.

[throwaway2037]

Doesn't Xcode use Clang for Objective-C and Swift? I find it hard to believe the code is so bloated. LLVM/Clang and GNU GCC are neck-in-neck for code size and speed. The rest of your comment is fine. I'm sorry about your experience.

[Auracle]

Heh, try the process for getting a dev kit from Nintendo. Or going through the lotcheck process for actually publishing/updating.

I made an app for the Wii U. There were multiple times before putting it on the store that my app was rejected for one thing, and then the next time I submitted it they rejected it because they wanted it the way I originally had it.

The app did decently well, so I thought I’d make a sequel for the Switch. I spent a month or two on enough of a prototype to show them and had my request for a dev kit flat out rejected multiple times, with absolutely no reason given. Not a single freaking word. I gave up.

[ilaksh]

Or go with a more open platform like Android.

Although, people might think you are poor. Which would be.. worse than death? Rather just not have an app for some people? lol

[cageface]

Google Play Store review might actually be worse now. It's certainly slower. It's great that you can sideload at least on Android although making money off a sideloaded Android app is very challenging to say the least.

[II2II]

Challenging is better than impossible.

That said, I am left wondering why more major software publishers don't have the option to sideload Android apps. (It was a while since I looked into it, since I mostly use open source apps these days, but it seemed as though most companies were switching to a Google Play Store only route a few years back even though they had the brand recognition to bypass Google's store altogether. The only thing I can think of are support costs, since few people would know how to enable the ability to load apps from other sources.)

[cageface]

You can't get push notifications in a sideloaded app right?

[kelnos]

Is that really the case? Why wouldn't you be able to? The FCM APIs aren't gated by install method; I've successfully used them while sideloading my own self-written, unpublished apps.

[SSLy]

of course you can. you just need logged off google play services and services framework middleware