I had a client reach out a little over two weeks ago ready to release their new app. I submitted it on a Monday, on Tuesday it was rejected. App Store asked for a video of the app working (showing all screens including account deletion flow, never been asked for this before) and a bunch of other information, including what back end services I used, never had that happen before either, but OK, I answered all the questions even the ones that I thought Apple had no business knowing. I resubmitted it within four hours after the rejection.
That app was still waiting for review over a week later. I filed two different expedite requests (despite getting a success screen both times, I never got an email from Apple, so I wasn’t sure if it went through) and I filed a developer support ticket. All of that resulted in absolutely nothing, and I’m still waiting now on the app to be reviewed over a week and a half later.
And that client? Yeah the app was for a Pizza Week event in their town, which is ending tomorrow, the app never launched. Thankfully I also had a mobile-friendly website but they are, obviously, not happy. Yes, a week was short notice and they should have reached out sooner to get the ball rolling but also I’m not at all accustomed to app review taking that long. A week was the worst I had seen in the last few months so 10 days of silence is a new record.
Demonstrates the dangers of a closed garden quite plainly - you are not running the garden & it might be closed for business when your long scheduled garden festival takes place!
It didn’t have to be an app, but Apple and Google heavily push apps as “the way” to do things on their platforms. They purposefully nerf their browsers and make in-browser applications harder to use.
It’s obvious why, they get much more control over apps and they like that. They also get to siphon off more money this way through in-app purchases and subscriptions.
Many, maybe even most, apps don’t require very many native features. Even something like notifications can be done in a browser and they are on desktop. But they’re still turned into apps, because apps are easier to use. You get a nice icon you can click.
You also get this strange phenomenon where a lot of apps are literally just web views + maybe a couple native APIs for things like notifications. It’s a complete waste of time.
One solution would be a platform where users can share little apps with each other. One that provides a programming environment and useful APIs. But, this is strictly against App Store policy! Which is why it doesn’t exist. The closest thing is the browser, which is nerfed.
Apple also spies on what website you visit, and especially if you make any online payment on it. I used an online service on someone's iPhone, through the browser, and since then, the App Store on their phone is now pushing them to download the App for it.
As someone who recently submitted Apps to the App and Play store, I must say Google's process is far worse. Yes, Apple charges 99$ and Google only 25$. But Google made me get 12 beta-testers opt-in to a google group accepting beta testing and downloading the app via a special link. Then I needed those 12 beta-testers to keep the app installed for 14 consecutive days. A single drop under the 12 user limit and the test resets all over. As a non-profit (not even ads) hobby project, I had to rely on sending emails via our newsletter, add in-website banners to our webapp etc, bother family members to download the app etc. to recruit enough testers.
> Developers with personal accounts created after November 13, 2023, must run a closed test for their app with a minimum of 12 testers who have been opted in continuously for at least 14 days.
This is just absurd. The whole point of your Google account is single sign-in, but they put so much garbage around their different services that maintaining a Google account is becoming unmanageable. I recently gave up on them after paying some money for Gemini only to receive dreadful API reachability, and then being asked to onboard and pay to a different Google service after I installed antigravity, with the credits not being transferable. Apparently (per Gemini itself) this is because there are two different AI units within Google who refuse to talk to each other and are trying to win position inside the company based on revenue.
So I say "you need 12 testers to submit an app" - you answer "you dont need testers if you have a play store account -which you have if you already published an app". So we are basically back at: "You cannot publish an app unless you already published an app, else you need 12 testers".
> You can avoid the 12 beta testers if you create an LLC
Yeah that is an easy option. In my jurisdiction that costs above 500€ for legal paperwork (notarized stuff) and now you have to submit double-entry bookeping records and tax forms every year. THAT is not an alternative to anything. Dissolving costs around 300€ just the notary appointment. Again, am in Europe.
You can create a Wyoming LLC without any physical presence, although you’ll have to pay a service to receive any legal/court notices in state and you’ll still have to pay any taxes owed in your own country. Wyoming has no income tax, and any US federal taxes from future revenue would be owed whether you’re an LLC or not.
The cost of the registered agent is usually the biggest cost (unless you can find someone who will do it for free).
Doesnt matter. In most EU countries, you are not taxed where the company is registered, but where the majority of "management decisions" are made - in that case, where the sole director of that company lives. That is why any LLC founding still results in the same paperwork as if you would found a corporation in Europe. I know 100% for sure in Germany in Spain, you will have to declare your majority stake in your tax filings and thus trigger tax filings for the LLC - even if that LLC owes 0€ in taxes, paperwork must be filed.
Such a stupid discussion to have in the first place, suggesting forming a buisness entity to fast track your hobby app into the play store.
This may be unpopular opinion, but IMO this is a good approach from Google. If you can't get 12 people to download your app then there is no reason to spam and keep it in the Google Play. I went through this process a few times as well and while I found it frustrating as well, I believe it's a good initial filter for spammers.
Except Google is now also starting to block apk installs so the only way to share toy apps is now the Play Store. Want to share your app with 10 other people? Too bad you're less than 12.
If you compare it to the Antrophic MCP apps directory review process both Apple and Google are a sweet dream. I apply for the Antrophic MCP directroy since March (sic!) and due to constant changes in their process I had to resubmit 5 times now!! We have November, 8 months. Sometimes you get ghosted, then approved, but you can't publish because they approved an older version that isn't compatible to _their_ updated publishing process anymore and they only way to make it work is to resubmit waiting again _months_ for an approval, although it already was approved. It is a nightmare! Folks, Antrophic is the living proof that you can make an app approval and publishing process even worse then Google Play or the Apple App store! Yes! :-D I am at a point where I do not care anymore about the Claude MCP Apps directory, although our users demand it. The ChatGPT app is running great by the way and got approved and published in April.
Apple's lock down is arguably incompatible with an AI enabled world. I know plenty of non-tech friends vibe coding apps for themselves now but they can't use them on an iPhone
Why couldn’t they run it on their iPhone if the app is for themselves? You can install it directly from xcode, the problem is when you want to release it to others.
Or is the “problem” in your case the non-tech part, so not knowing how to install xcode and the developer license? The xcode part Claude can automate (once you’ve downloaded it) I guess.
And they didn't keep grabbing your money. It was a done deal. Apple still takes 30% commission on app sales and in-app purchases beyond your Apple Developer Program. In EU, Apple charges €0.50 per annual install for every first-time install per year over a threshold of 1 million downloads, even for free apps.
Versus what? the multiple $100-200/month AI subscriptions many people have? or, more charitably, the 3-6 $20/month subscriptions most of which go unused.
I wish it wasn't there but for $100 you can install custom software you want on the phone without all the annoyances.
With Google Play store you pay 25$ one time, but you need to find 12 beta-testers that are willing to test your app for 14 consecutive days at the same time. Then and only then you will be allowed in the play store. Sideloading has become a pain in the butt on Android just as on iOS.
Your daughter couldn't publish anything for Android either, unless she is of legal age, uploads her drivers license and pays $25 to Google. Sideloading on Android has become even worse than on iOS, with a 24h waiting period to enable it.
> Sideloading on Android has become even worse than on iOS, with a 24h waiting period to enable it.
In the short-term, I suppose that 24-hour period is *#@!§$%-annoying and a regression compared to the previous situation, but beyond that it's still way better than Apple where a) you have to install Xcode and build the app yourself, b) you can only install three apps concurrently and c) you need to reinstall them every seven days.
With Android, beyond that initial 24-hour waiting period, you don't need any external software, you can install an unlimited number of apps and once installed they stay installed forever.
My phone has no such delay or verification, but sure they'll roll it out eventually. Sideloading from a computer has no delay, only downloaded APKs, and that only once. You can get a developer account without ID or payment for up to 20 devices.
I think none of this should be the case, and I'll switch to a custom OS on my next device if not this one, but I don't think it's worse than iOS?
A paid plan, with no review needed, will give you a year I believe before you have to reinstall. Only free accounts have the 7-day limit
> If if daughter vibe codes an app you can bet she wants to share it with her friends.
Testflight internal, no review. Or Testflight external, minor review (I've heard it's much faster/easier than normal app store review, I don't use it).
That's correct, but why do I have to pay Apple $99/year to install an app that I wrote on my own phone from own computer over a physical connection and not have to reinstall it every week?
Apologies, I didn't mean to insinuate that it was right that Apple charge $99 a year to install software on hardware you own. I just was pointing out there are ways around that.
Mostly that it gets around any review issues (mostly, unless you use external Testflight).
> Why couldn’t they run it on their iPhone if the app is for themselves? You can install it directly from xcode, the problem is when you want to release it to others.
Assuming you're referring to free, non-developer accounts, having to re-sign one's app is a really annoying inconvenience which should not exist.
I grow really tired of these excuses for the multi-trillion dollar company doing its best to make it difficult for users. "Just do this really annoying thing. What's the problem?"
Last I checked those apps expire after about a week and there are quite a few other restrictions, and why bother when most apps can just as well be a simple webpage which Claude has no trouble building either ;)
Because the boundary between running it yourself and having others run it would normally be fluid. It makes sense that after you run it yourself, you'd like friends and family also to run it.
Also as said in this thread, limit of 3 concurrent apps, have to reinstall every week, have to own a mac with xcode.
Many devs use TestFlight to distribute links to beta testers and friends a family. It's "free" if you pay the $99 Apple dev. The initial part is not frictionless because you still need to have your approved by Apple, but to the end users it's not any different than downloading from the App Store.
This is the World they themselves created by consistently supporting coeporate-controlled computing, in which they are just a guest on their own devices, so my sympathy is limited.
There have been plenty of warnings over the past 20 years that this scenario is unfolding, but people wilfully ignored that because "it just works" and "but what about my banking apps?!".
Maybe it's not appropriate to go Full Stallman on your colleagues, but have you challenged them to change their purchasing choices for the future?
Google has a similar or even worse lock-down nowadays. 25$ fee for identification, similar submission process with all its scrutiny of answering useless questions etc.
I’ve been chafing against Apple’s iOS restrictions for a while and I agree - maybe this will push them to change.
I’d argue they need to consider a middle ground - maybe allowing the free developer account to share an app to a maximum number of people (10? 20?) and for a (much) longer period than a week.
It shouldn’t be any more difficult than sharing an artefact from Claude.
I've been waiting about two weeks for the last review for my app, I got one rejection and that took 20 days. It's a bit of a bummer but there isn't anything I can do about it.
I've got a couple PWAs I deploy off of my tailnet and use on my iPhone and iPad.
I have encountered no issues (using IndexedDB for user data) so far. If you approach database sizes larger than 1GB I believe you might run into quotas.
I would have to test that because that is concerning but I have apparently solved that problem by accident by syncing my IndexedDBs with an API server when a connection is available.
You need their permission for External TestFlight distribution anyway, otherwise you need to add everyone to the App Store Connect account to forego their reviews.
Currently suffering through rejections just to get a client’s app into the first rounder of testers’ hands.
Depends on the reason. "Bullshit" is in the eye of the beholder.
I don't think that they reject for branding issues, in the TestFlight review (like they do, for the App Store -I have had my app rejected, because it had the word "finder" in its name). For example, if you change the color of the Sign in with Apple button, it will get rejected (in the App Store review -I don't know if they would reject it in the TestFlight review).
They do, however, look for things like private API access, crashes, and dodgy behavior. Even if a code path is TODO, it shouldn't crash. I just fill those with NOP functions.
First rejection they ask me to take a video of the app working (and they explicitly ask for a real iPhone although I did it in the emulator and it passed). Isn't that the whole point of their review to do it themselves?
Then now they ask me for documented authorization of each radio listed in the app. I keep pointing that there is already apps with the same data source as mine (radio-browser) and they keep replying the same thing.
Each round takes days or a week.
I don't think humans were involved in any part of this process (except me). I guess I will have to fake it somehow.
I have a previous app approved and I must say the process was actually better than what I had anticipated back then.
It’s just a matter of time before Apple’s review process gets completely automated by AI. And I’m low-key surprised it hasn’t already been. But of course, it’s Apple. so…
IOS is such a dream for virtual instruments: Cheaper than desktop versions, portable, plenty of choice. But the web is getting better too. Plenty of excellent music apps there. The App Store is not the future and it feels good.
I'm not sure what Apple can do here; Pandora's box is open and it won't be closed. It felt like there was a flood of app releases in the early 2010s during the gold rush. I can't even imagine it now.
I noticed that Apple has been updating their documentation so developers can have less back and forth when releasing an app.
Apple has anti-spam app policies that basically limit innovation and competition in certain product categories. An extreme example would be Apple not allowing any more "sleep music apps" b/c there is enough in the store.
An investor actually approached me about buying a couple mobile apps I made b/c they are "aged" and don't need to go through the rigorous first-review approval process
My most recent two submissions were rejected, they asked me to upload videos of me playing the games on a physical device. Honestly! I’m at a loss. They would rather reject and pushback until they can just watch a video than review the app? I guess it shifts some of the approval workload back onto me? If it works, I’m still waiting, I’ll attach videos in future to skip the pain.
The developer has to produce documentation of what works etc before the Apple reviewers waste time on it. Given the load of AI slop they must be getting the limiting resource is the reviewer so cut down the work they have to do.
Your logic or understanding is bad. The video is only requested after a rejection, not before submission. So Apple are not saving themselves time here, quite the opposite they are causing multiple rounds of review.
The app/game is already proven to work at the time it is compiled and again as it is uploaded and put through Apple’s first line of App Store checks.
Apple is already putting large demands on developers with enforced SDK changes and new devices, we need them to do more for us not less. Large companies might be able to eat the time required to do these videos, but as an indie developer it already takes hours or days to prepare the app store page. This is not good by any measure.
In both of these cases the platforms are absurdly profitable, 75% profit margin for Apple, fleet of mega-yachts for Steam, the solution is they stop skimping on review and hire more people to keep up.
If the reason for the higher throughput is the flood of mostly AI-generated slop apps, does it make sense to hire and spend human time reviewing them? IMO the answer is no, because there isn't an upper limit to the number of apps that can be generated.
In 2020 they had 500 reviewers and had grown to about 2 million apps, the judge in the Epic trial called them out for not hiring enough. Today they still have 500 reviewers and about 3 million apps, so you can't exclusively blame the growth on AI slop it's a combination of they should have been hiring more reviewers all along and AI slop has exacerbated their long-standing decision not to.
They have some duty to the developers who paid them for distribution rights whether they're making AI slop, manual slop or something worthwhile, and their processes should scale appropriately.
A nicer way to frame it would be a $1000 deposit, and you get fee free sales up until the fees waived reach the deposit. It's zero cost for real games but a barrier to slop.
They will not. Why would high revenue be a reason to hire more?
They look at margins and they want to optimize them, not use better margins as a reason to pursue smaller margins. Small time indie developers and businesses that earn them less than millions a month in fees are not worth their time. They’re solving this by automating more telemetry, not by hiring more junior and senior reviewers. They don’t want to take a loss on small devs.
I suspect Apple knows that most of their revenue comes from the top 500 casino games for children. They probably get all their reviews fast-tracked to keep them happy.
Most (by quantity) of the rest is apps that are free and don't make much money from IAP and just monetize with tons of ads. Apple doesn't get their beak wet on those so they know that even a few million more spent on reviewers wouldn't make a big difference in their own revenue.
> I suspect Apple knows that most of their revenue comes from the top 500 casino games for children. They probably get all their reviews fast-tracked to keep them happy.
Trust me they know, that's why every single marketing page on the appstore (do not take my word for it, go check it) almost only talks about either education or productivity apps.
Or they could focus on a better developer experience (like more testers/faster turnaround) which will drive even more people to their platform. The extra investment might be worth it.
'Optimize' here seems to mean abusing the very developers who produce software for their devices. This is just greed and imho proof that markets are not self-correcting.
Hire more reviewers. Apple is making a shitload of money from App Store sales (and of course by scamming its users in many creative ways). They'd better spend it on making developers happier, not on thickening the walls of their garden.
They don’t make a shitload off the small apps like the synthesizer from this post. They aren’t going to introduce more expensive Cupertino and Cork reviewers to help that category of dev. They’re a business and will automate instead of have small time earners occupy more time on reviewer desks.
A lot, they _can_ do almost whatever they want with their own AppStore and own business model. Including making good on the anti-trust lawsuit they've got for a decade around the world and let go of their monopoly.
We shouldn't make it sound like they _have to be_ the bad guys. Even from a business standpoint they're slowly losing the grip on their market and getting back some goodwill wouldn't be a bad thing.
And this is what happens when your phone is not a general purpose computer that can run any program you wish, either written by you or somebody else. People need to stop rewarding Apple for this behavior, and instead buy devices that support free operating systems. Somewhat ironically, one of the best options is Google's Pixel phones with Graphene, Lineage and other "custom ROMs."
> Somewhat ironically, one of the best options is Google's Pixel phones with Graphene, Lineage and other "custom ROMs."
And people also need to stop thinking in general-purpose computer only to the OS layer. A Pixel is no good to me either for precisely the same reason: it is, based on its feature set, not an (ultramobile) general-purpose computer.
> I feel like most devices don't fit this list of requirements.
Very perceptive! :)
As a matter of fact, Samsung out of all cases got pretty close with the Galaxy Note9 [1]. I don't know about the bootloader. Didn't care back then since I only used them on the job. The other major annoyance, apart from the non-removable battery, was its display from PWM hell, which made privately owning it already a dealbraker.
We used Note9s to great effect for crime scene documentation, sasec concept prep, local security camera maintenance/analysis, etc.; the combination of annotating floor plans and photos with precision as well as taking voice notes on the move was unmatched; nothing ever came close.
Samsung itself would have to make a follow-up to the XCover6Pro (not XCover7Pro) with S-Pen support, more RAM and storage, better CPU and cameras, and boatloader access for GOS support. Hell's frozen over twice before that'll ever happen; big money's only in further enshittification. Now just "AI"-labeled.
It will be difficult to find a phone that does all this, but a USB hub, a flash drive and a headphone adapter would get you most of what you ask for. It won't make coffee though.
The obviousness being that you've got the general-purpose computing essentials covered without impeding safe and (more) secure handheld operation.
Hub (or dock) compatibility is also a necessity, but that's for locked-in-place or steadily-positioned operation, e. g. on the table, or from a car port.
Wait but it is? I compile and run software even on stock android phones. You can even a enable a full built in linux shell in android developer options now.
> The only thing that makes it not a general-purpose computer is the omission of an onboard compiler.
I was talking about the design aesthetics of a handheld general-purpose computing device, i. e. one that within its device-class is not overspecialized. That's largely hardware design, which obviously can't be altered as easily.
A compiler? As long as the machine let's me install all the software I need (later), and without any permission torture from "sideloading" hell, I'm good.
I mean you've got a chap in this very discussion for whom certain stock Android devices are enough cos he can run his compilers and Linux. But to me a Pixel, or any similar feature-downgraded device, is utterly undesireable; shipping one with a compiler out of the box is not even a consolation prize, lol.
Neither Android nor Graphene have a tenth of the musical instruments, effects, sequencers, etc. available to them that ios does. The closed nature of the App Store allows a software ecosystem beneficial to audio software developers. Eliminate that, eliminate the reason for developers to create these instruments.
There are no perfect platforms, there are only tradeoffs. The iOS tradeoff apparently is preferred by these developers.
> The iOS tradeoff apparently is preferred by these developers.
Could be a bit of momentum. Androids audio stack started out with a completely incompetent latency of near 500ms pre Jellybean, was made a bit less terrible through the years [1], and only becoming acceptable in 2021 [2], still near 2x of iPhone from over a decade before.
Apps like garage band were so impressive because could not function on Android.
iOS does not have a tenth of the musical instruments, effects or sequencers that Windows VSTs have.
It's a turtles-all-the-way-down situation. I've toured with musicians before, and they are not jamming on iPads or plugging their DAC into an iPhone. They're running full-fat computers, real Omnisphere presets and the total Melodyne suite, not the pedestrian trial versions that the App Store sells.
> The closed nature of the App Store allows a software ecosystem beneficial to audio software developers.
Why is that? Valve has sold plenty of games to Linux gamers and now has its Steam Machine, etc. So commercial software on open platforms is definitely viable.
I have 3 apps on the store that are inconsequential in the scheme of things and reviewers often spend at most 2 minutes on updates. Sometimes longer, but typically the longest part of the process is getting into review. The lack of transparency is genuinely irritating and everyone but Apple and their bottom line would be better served by them applying the gatekeeper security model to iOS.
Have just submitted two new apps last week and they’ve been published 2 days later. Updated them a couple of times this week and that also took around 2 days.
Not sure if it’s because I have a good track record but I only had been rejected a couple of times and even then I just had to submit a screen recording of me playing with the app to make it pass the review process.
At this rate, I feel like some kind of software product could come out that collects rejection cases for each area and domain and gets you past AI review (whether through jailbreaks, adversarial attacks, or just making the app properly).
Maybe I’m just lucky, but we’ve had under 24 hour review times for all of our iOS app reviews over the past few months, including our first submission of the app on a new account. Our Android app first release took longer at about 48 hours, and an update after they less than 24.
Normally in other fields of endeavor if we can differentiate between two ways a thing was made we are thus able to split individual things into two potential sets and place them accordingly. I realize that "developers" may wish to have the two categories commingled for their own purposes but I think they should just get over themselves and realize that you can't fight the natural human tendency to separate things into groups for identifying potential differences between them.
I don’t think it’s that and I think you know that; this article had a clear agenda. There is an obvious implication that AI-made means “worse”. As a Software Engineer of 13 years and someone who makes things with AI in their spare time, I hold both to the same standard of quality. To most people it shouldn’t matter who made it, while devs have been spinning the “AI-slop” trope. At some point people are going to have to get over it.
This was a few years ago, but I also got the weird (imo) requirement to record a video of the app working (not a screen recording). Not sure what they needed it for, but it got approved after that.
> My app was REJECTED from submission FOUR TIMES in row. Always same reason (eg. my app is “design spam” and “duplicates existing apps” and it is createed using “app generation template services”) as shown bellow in screenshots. Which is obvious nonsense.
You can feel the entitlement across the room from the developer. They seem to be unable to conceive that outside of their bubble there can be a real case of AI spamming that same look and feel, even if they did it by heart.
Looking at his work, it's clearly modelled after Serum (which even the article describes as "a sort of Serum 2 for iOS") so I am not sure why they think this suddenly deserves a white glove service here.
The App Store is also flooded with Synth apps, so regardless of the UI being the trigger here, I would imagine the category itself has been flagged as spammy and now has a higher bar of entry.
If anything I would use this as an opportunity to reskin and try to stand out, they're giving you a blueprint of what will perform better on the algorithm if you avoid that look if you think about it.
technically, anyone can grab a copy of source, put their phone into developer mode and install the app too.
But- practically, it's hard.
You only get 4 application slots on devices in dev mode for example and I think they also expire.
I tried creating an internal app for my company and was gobsmacked that I didn't have any sane method to distribute it short of taking full ownership of everyones devices via MDM.
You are of course not allowed to publish "internal" apps to Testflight (or the App Store, but that's more obvious).
Is entitlement always a problem? Maybe if apple didn't try their best to hold a monopoly on app distribution for a large percentage of the mobile userbase, developers wouldn't feel frustrated in this regard. Who's apple to decide which apps aren't allowed because they "duplicate existing apps", and how fairly is that even applied? Are calculators allowed on the app store? It seems awfully like they duplicate existing functionality.
First, I am not trusting them at face value. They are building a copycat of Serum and most likely could be doing some level of vibe-coding themselves.
Second, to your point, say we trusted them, it's a chicken or the egg problem. After all the trash entered the space it became flagged and a scale/moderation issue.
I'm not sure why Apple needs to be policing who gets to compete for a given functionality. Malware? Yeah, for sure, police it. Non-functional software? Maybe, if it's really bad. That's more or less a scam.
But simply because you're solving the same problem others are? No, that's horrible overreach. We have copyright and patent law to deal with outright copies. It's not Apple's place.
“Just try an alt store” is a condescendingly flippant comment - there is near zero market for iOS alt stores and most people in most countries have no access either.
My above comment is not an excuse for design spam. The design spam rule is necessary. Your feedback is not.
Synths have never been a high profit business on iOS. And small earners are not a priority for Apple review. There’s a business case for not being bothered with most indie apps.
To suggest there’s categorically no room for innovation or value add with new synth products is just ignorant though.
There is also near zero market for more Synth Apps at this point so I'm not sure what you want here.
It's like when the App Store started, someone made a Flashlight App and it was cool. We sure had enough of that by now. Now that AI turned everyone into a maker and the bar is lower in a world of abundance, it's only natural that things shift in terms of expectations for distribution.
This is how new markets take shape too, YouTube became so trash that now platforms such as Nebula came out as a business.
I’m genuinely not sure if you’re doing a bit, especially after explicitly calling out the “entitlement” of the development.
Is “we don’t think there’ll be a market for this” a defensible reason to disqualify an app from the App Store? What’s even your point? You are just looking to be argumentative and pretty clearly have no interest in actually discussing this.
I'll take the callout, I did get emotional. Reason being is because I have bought over 20 synth apps and have worked in the music industry. Looking at the app and the way they reacted to not getting approved made me upset.
I wouldn't describe it as entitlement. I think one of the issues I would have if I was in this situation is that the developer membership is paid for and the service provider (Apple) is actively refusing to let you engage in part of what you did pay for (the ability to publish apps on the App Store). You can bet that Apple won't give you a refund of that membership fee.
They provided reasons and it is within the terms of service of what you paid for, they were also able to appeal, and I suggest you check the app and the reference app to which the claim is being made against.
I mean they are entitled to it in a way. You pay Apple 99 Dollars a year to be able to distribute your apps on the store. Why should apple care if it is design spam or a duplicate of an existing app? Most of the apps available in the store would check those boxes too.
> You can feel the entitlement across the room from the developer.
Apple felt they were entitled to insert themselves as an all powerful gate keeper in program distribution, the least they could do is not be shit at it.
For those of us who believe in free markets, yeah we should be entitled to sell more or less any legal software. It shouldn't be Apple's place to police it. Europe had the right idea breaking their app store monopoly.
Audiothing plugins are my faves for years, strange that trusted devs don't get the benefit of the doubt and have to wait in the same queue as new unproven devs.
The pile of open and/or hackable music hardware flooding the market makes iOS obsolete for most of my music use cases. I'm working on synths and performance tools, and had planned to sign up for an Apple Developer account to distribute them for both Mac and iOS, but even last year when I was first looking into it (pre-AI for me and most of the development world) it was already apparent that getting permission to sell apps to Apple users was a shitty process and maybe not worth the trouble. Now it seems to be even more toxic, as the queue is filled with slop. I think I'll probably focus on stuff like the FM-1 and the upcoming hackable APC or Behringer gear.
I also have been in the synth/audio realm for a while, and the situation with MVAVE FM-1[1] et al., is something that has been a long time coming.
Musicians love to tweak their instruments - the rigid paths of purchased plugins and soft synths is pretty much over. There are so many wonderful, amazing things being done - by the hour, literally - that someone who has been in this world for a while might be wondering just what to do with themselves. By the time I've worked out the design/architecture for a new synth feature or concept, there are already 20 or 30 vibe-coded variants out there in different forms..
Like all good music-tech hackers I keep a lab/ folder with F/OSS projects, and as I review disk space on the regular I notice that my lab/FM-1/ folder grows day by day by day with absolutely astonishing bits of code, some 80+ projects in all (and by no means complete), a gource rendering of the repo collection reveals an extremely vibrant and flourishing scene. And as I do these code reviews (because who isn't doing code reviews these days), I am reminded of a very cold, hard, sharp and penetrating fact: its about the hardware.
The synth world is being completely refactored, as a marketplace and as a community, by the AI revolution. The only ones getting anywhere interesting with it, though, are the ones building the hardware ...
[1] MVAVE-FM1 is an extremely important lesson. It is, 101%, a F/OSS success story. It began life as a host for a very nice synth engine - is is now a host for the hottest synth engine of the next twenty minutes!! A relative outsider has done the impossible: make something great, ultra-cheap, relatively available .. and now AI has cracked it wide, wide open - just as it is doing with cracking open the very expensive nuts of very very, very expensive competing synthesizers. The $60 FM-1 is outshining a whole fleet of $600- and higher devices, and the custom firmware circuit is not going back in the bag.
The DSP guys have their hair on fire. So the race is on to create the next platform. While Apple are gate-keeping their garden, Akai, and Korg, and .. so, so many others .. are about to have their platforms become the hottest place for developers to do things, at another end of the scale.
Its a crazy year to be a digital musician. We literally don't need Apple any more.
I m waiting for weeks to just enroll in their developer program, that i have paid for. Are they deliberately stalling everything to stop people from putting more stuff in the app store? I m going to go ahead and release the android version and make sure to badmouth apple to their users. life is short
I am more interested in the fact so many people are spamming the app store. What are they hoping for actually? If you can write a prompt for it, anyone can do it. There's no value in an app like before. I think those times are over.
Maybe the "democratization" of it will bring in fresh ideas. Maybe not. But anyway basically no one will make any money or have any success off these vibe coded apps.
Tens of millions of people finally have the ability to make apps. So they are.
But for billions of people it's still way too high of friction for now. Especially on mobile and iOS. So they download apps.
There's still success to be had too. Distribution is all that's ever really mattered. If you have money to advertise or authority in some niche... you can get users and customers, no matter the slop.
Most of the new people making apps will learn that the hard way like the rest of us, but some will succeed.
You have to rebuild/reinstall the app every week if it’s not published to the App Store. Vibe coded iOS apps are basically worthless if you don’t publish them via the App Store. I would bet much of the flood would be avoided if you could permanently install your own vibe coded apps.
Apple and Google are a mobile cartel, they need to be broken up.
This is absurd.
If people want the editorialized 'safety' of an App Store, they can use it, that's fine, but there's no reason to stop people from buying apps for their phone from wherever they want.
I'm getting reviews completed within 24 hours currently. I wonder if there's just a shortage of reviewers trained on the specific risks surrounding synth plugins.
We’re about two months on an initial release. It’s complicated, nothing that could just be a PWA. I started “early” so we wouldn’t have to sweat it, and now it’s coming down to a line.
The title is too friendly to Apple. Sure the flood of apps is making their lives harder, but also remember that they choose to force everyone through this and you have to PAY them to do their job this badly.
It's more than that, they choose to do the absolute least they can and pocket immense profits. In 2021 the judge in the Epic case called them out for only having 500 reviewers now it's 2026 and they still only have 500 reviewers.
In a land of commodified apps, the platform has all the power and the dev has none. Like at this point, they could up their cut to 90% of revenue. There would be an outcry and many devs would leave. But in the end getting even 10% of the revenue of an app you whipped together by telling claude to "make an app, no mistakes" is too good to refuse.
I wonder if Apple is genuinely having issues or they just have internal rejection targets per genre or have some criteria tied to expected sales.
The size of target demographics of music creation apps are basically zero. Even if the music created were to be sold on Apple Music to be played million times, that won't get reasoned and traced back to be attributed to these apps. These are likely a "waste of disk that nobody buys and won't lead to MAS user retention", in a narrow view concerning just the Mac App Store.
App Store review process was always known to be inconsistent, unfair, unpredictable, just wrong, a reviewer gacha gambling of its own, etc. etc., but, I mean, causes of rejections mentioned in the article sounds a bit bogus, like bad fault tree analysis.
To me it seems like the core problem here is that Apple has implemented a really crappy AI review process. In particular it seems much dumber than just asking Claude to review an app.
It should be possible to build a review process based on AI that is both faster and more accurate than the 2020-era human-based review process. This isn't rocket science. Are they trying to cheap out by using bad AI models? Or is this some corporate policy where they can only use an "Apple model"? Or do they not have people who are good at developing AI-based workflows?
Hard to say from the outside, but this doesn't seem like some sort of inevitable thing, it just seems like Apple has built a bad process here.
My last app was a fairly significant update, and took about 80 hours. In the past, this would normally take less than 12.
But I remember when the app would wait over a week for review, so it's still better than Ye Days of Yore.
I'm almost positive that the reason is a tsunami of slopplets. I know a couple people, just in my orbit, that vibe-coded their first iOS apps. One is a seasoned engineer, and his app is pretty good. The other...not so much, but it did get approved (faster than my update).
Apple's app review process has always been a silly game. I have a music playing app, and every actual screenshot gets rejected in review for "displaying copyrighted content" (album art). And the terms of review say the screenshots must come from the app, not be mockups. So dumb. I have a fake music collection of fake artists and albums that I load to generate screenshots ... colossal waste of time.
A company I'm familiar with had their app rejected for "App does not contain means to delete accounts"
Then all subsequent ones were rejected "Developer provided test account stopped working"
Logs show that the tester used the "delete my account" function..
As the only customer service available is an uncaring LLM, the only solution that worked was to keep the "Delete my account" button in the app, and make it a NOP on the server side.
This is my experience with app review. They’ll flag things as the exact opposite of what they are in reality. It’s like Apple intentionally hired the worst people to randomly gatekeep the App Store.
We “solved” this by making the delete my account button send you a confirmation email to the email associated with the account. Reviewers can press the button, but they can’t receive the confirmation email, so the account does not get deleted.
By 2028, captcha will be dead and to log in to a site you’ll need to give a hot take that an LLM wouldn’t generate…
One thing before you enter… Was it true that Treyvon Martin was safe at home and his girlfriend convinced him to go fight George Zimmerman? Explain how that changes the narrative you were told repeatedly.”
Here is the world's tiniest violin playing just for Apple. Their anti-competitive policies on app distribution mean people literally cannot distribute their apps without their acceptance. EVEN TO THEIR OWN FUCKING PHONE (unless you're willing to re-sign your application EVERY FUCKING WEEK). This "problem" is going to become exponentially "worse." I'm using quotes because cheap and ubiquitous software is not a problem. It's amazing, and Apple preventing people from freely exchanging software is an affront to the entire space.
>It was over a month of back-and-forth, so I threw my hands up and released it audio-only for now. What we will do is bundle the MIDI build into the binary so both AUv3s install.
Oh, so they are trying to do a soft bait and switch; where an app developer makes an app, splits its functionality, and sells both on the app store. They hope that someone buys the first app, which is missing basic functionality, not realizing they have to buy a second app to get the additional expected features. Like if you buy a video converter app that doesn't let you convert to an MP4 unless you buy a second "MP4 version" video converter app. Scummy behavior, glad Apple blocked it.
There is a surge of vibe coded apps in the iOS community.
Some of them are good - generally by musicians or sound designers who couldn't code.
Many are utter trash, designed by developers who have barely any musical taste and simply told Claude to make some glitchy reverb pedal or groovebox. They use AI to write the copy for the app store and leave the UI as default (navy with fixed width headers, often looking like more like a spreadsheet than a synth). Sometimes trying to charge as much as $30 for it. It's a scourge but on the upside, most of them have now got their dopamine fix and moved onto something else.
> you could wait three weeks only to have it rejected. I’m in daily contact with iOS developers. Many have lost their former euphoria; instead, they express disillusionment and doubt that things will ever be the same.
Who has ever released an iOS app and has "former euphoria"? The process been utterly frustrating for many, many years at this point, and it is a running gag among iOS developers how stupid your rejections can get.
Yes, everything is getting hammered seemingly, took me a month to get new account verified on Steamworks, which used to take two weeks. Lots of places face longer review times, some places seem to double-down on automating as much as possible, without really having sufficient rigor for it in reality.
Couldn’t help myself, asked Claude for the most iconic post complaining about developing Apple software every year since iOS came out.
2007 — John Gruber, "WWDC 2007 Keynote News"
This was his reaction to Jobs telling developers to build web apps instead of real ones. Its best-known line: "If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it."
2008 — Fraser Speirs, "App Store: I'm Out"
The battle lines were drawn when an Apple representative reviewing submissions for the App Store rejected a program called Podcaster for duplicating iTunes. Speirs then vowed never to write another iPhone app for the store "as currently constituted." Runner-up: the anger over the SDK's secrecy agreement (NDA), which Apple dropped in October after admitting it placed "too much of a burden" on iPhone developers.
2009 — Paul Graham, "Apple's Mistake"
Graham wrote that the App Store is an ongoing karma leak. Pair it with Joe Hewitt quitting the Facebook iPhone app the same month: "I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process."
2010 — Lee Brimelow (Adobe), "Apple Slaps Developers in the Face"
This was about rule 3.3.1, which banned apps built with cross-platform tools like Flash. Brimelow ended it with: Go screw yourself Apple. (coverage)
2011 — Readability's open letter to Apple
"We believe that your new policy smacks of greed," wrote Rich Ziade, Readability's creator. Apple reversed itself within days. (coverage)
2012 — Marco Arment, "The Mac App Store's future of irrelevance"
His target was the new sandboxing rules: "leaving is often a better option, or the only option, for the affected developers". Runner-up: Wil Shipley's essay arguing the Mac App Store needs paid upgrades.
2013 — Ken Case (Omni Group) on OmniKeyMaster (the weakest year)
Omni tried to offer discounted upgrades to Mac App Store buyers and had to back down: "My apologies: I'm afraid we will not be able to offer upgrade pricing to our Mac App Store customers after all." (coverage)
2014 — Jared Sinclair, "A Candid Look at Unread's First Year"
His sales numbers set off the "indie apocalypse" debate. Runner-up: Apple ordered PCalc's calculator widget removed while featuring it. Apple then backed down possibly due in part to the firestorm of press and social media criticism.
2015 — Bohemian Coding, "Leaving the Mac App Store" (Sketch)
Gruber's verdict on it: "The Mac App Store is rotting, at least for productivity software."
2016 — Bogdan Popescu, "Dash and Apple: My Side of the Story"
Apple shut his developer account. He published a recorded call in which they want me to write a blog post in order to restore my account. One caveat for your article: Apple said the account was linked to almost a thousand fraudulent reviews.
2017 — Matt Gemmell, "Damage"
His thesis: "No company has done as much damage to the perceived value of software, and the sustainability of being an independent developer, as Apple."
2018 — The Developers Union open letter
It asked Apple for free trials for apps and a "more reasonable revenue cut." (coverage)
2019 — Daniel Ek, "Time to Play Fair" (Spotify)
Spotify's CEO compared Apple's rules to inviting you to a match on our ping-pong table and then forcing you to play blindfolded while we change the rules throughout the game.
2020 — DHH's Twitter thread about the Hey email app (archived on hey.com)
"I will burn this house down myself, before I let gangsters like that spin it for spoils." Probably the most famous thread in this whole history.
2021 — Kosta Eleftheriou's thread on scam apps
It opened with "The App Store has a big problem": copycat scam apps were outselling honest developers while Apple took its cut. (coverage)
2022 — Judgment call
The most-seen post was Elon Musk's "Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?" (it got quickly tagged by Community Notes). For a working developer's complaint, use Alin Panaitiu's post about being rejected for being "too similar to a website".
2023 — Eric Migicovsky and Beeper Mini
Beeper Mini brought iMessage to Android, and Apple kept blocking it. By late December Beeper gave up, with Canadian CEO Eric Migicovsky writing in a blog post that Beeper "can't win" against Apple.
2024 — Tim Sweeney's thread on the EU rules
Apple's response to the EU's Digital Markets Act was, he wrote, "a devious new instance of Malicious Compliance", with plenty more "hot garbage" in it. (coverage)
2025 — David Smith, "The Forgotten Customer"
"They aren't trying to win me over by being excellent; they are assuming my loyalty through strong-arm tactics and intransigence." Runner-up: the backlash to Apple's Liquid Glass redesign, as in this line collected by Michael Tsai: "Liquid Glass has killed my motivation and desire to develop anything for Apple platforms."
2026 (so far) — Marco Arment on App Review delays
"App Store review delays are back to Shoemaker-era levels." Many blame a flood of AI-generated apps. That makes a neat bookend to 2008, which was also about waiting on App Review. (Mastodon) Runner-up: Jeff Johnson's "Small ways the App Store could be improved for developers".
I had a client reach out a little over two weeks ago ready to release their new app. I submitted it on a Monday, on Tuesday it was rejected. App Store asked for a video of the app working (showing all screens including account deletion flow, never been asked for this before) and a bunch of other information, including what back end services I used, never had that happen before either, but OK, I answered all the questions even the ones that I thought Apple had no business knowing. I resubmitted it within four hours after the rejection.
That app was still waiting for review over a week later. I filed two different expedite requests (despite getting a success screen both times, I never got an email from Apple, so I wasn’t sure if it went through) and I filed a developer support ticket. All of that resulted in absolutely nothing, and I’m still waiting now on the app to be reviewed over a week and a half later.
And that client? Yeah the app was for a Pizza Week event in their town, which is ending tomorrow, the app never launched. Thankfully I also had a mobile-friendly website but they are, obviously, not happy. Yes, a week was short notice and they should have reached out sooner to get the ball rolling but also I’m not at all accustomed to app review taking that long. A week was the worst I had seen in the last few months so 10 days of silence is a new record.
Expedited review is just a joke I guess.
Demonstrates the dangers of a closed garden quite plainly - you are not running the garden & it might be closed for business when your long scheduled garden festival takes place!
>Yeah the app was for a Pizza Week event in their town
Really begs the question of why this ever had to be an app in the first place. Even if we already have app platforms for events to use.
This could have been a single pdf download from the towns event page on a website.
I won't even install an app for a well known company, let alone some single event. The world has gone insane.
It didn’t have to be an app, but Apple and Google heavily push apps as “the way” to do things on their platforms. They purposefully nerf their browsers and make in-browser applications harder to use.
It’s obvious why, they get much more control over apps and they like that. They also get to siphon off more money this way through in-app purchases and subscriptions.
Many, maybe even most, apps don’t require very many native features. Even something like notifications can be done in a browser and they are on desktop. But they’re still turned into apps, because apps are easier to use. You get a nice icon you can click.
You also get this strange phenomenon where a lot of apps are literally just web views + maybe a couple native APIs for things like notifications. It’s a complete waste of time.
One solution would be a platform where users can share little apps with each other. One that provides a programming environment and useful APIs. But, this is strictly against App Store policy! Which is why it doesn’t exist. The closest thing is the browser, which is nerfed.
Apple also spies on what website you visit, and especially if you make any online payment on it. I used an online service on someone's iPhone, through the browser, and since then, the App Store on their phone is now pushing them to download the App for it.
As someone who recently submitted Apps to the App and Play store, I must say Google's process is far worse. Yes, Apple charges 99$ and Google only 25$. But Google made me get 12 beta-testers opt-in to a google group accepting beta testing and downloading the app via a special link. Then I needed those 12 beta-testers to keep the app installed for 14 consecutive days. A single drop under the 12 user limit and the test resets all over. As a non-profit (not even ads) hobby project, I had to rely on sending emails via our newsletter, add in-website banners to our webapp etc, bother family members to download the app etc. to recruit enough testers.
One time 25$ vs 100$ every year though (and your app disappears when you stop paying).
And the 12 beta-testers is rather knew and doesn't apply to older accounts.
It applies to new apps, not accounts. The google account I used is over a decade old.
I don't think that's true and it certainly didn't apply to me. Was it already a Google Play account or just a Google account?
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
> Developers with personal accounts created after November 13, 2023, must run a closed test for their app with a minimum of 12 testers who have been opted in continuously for at least 14 days.
Why the hell would I have a google play account?
... to add your app in the Play Store.
This is just absurd. The whole point of your Google account is single sign-in, but they put so much garbage around their different services that maintaining a Google account is becoming unmanageable. I recently gave up on them after paying some money for Gemini only to receive dreadful API reachability, and then being asked to onboard and pay to a different Google service after I installed antigravity, with the credits not being transferable. Apparently (per Gemini itself) this is because there are two different AI units within Google who refuse to talk to each other and are trying to win position inside the company based on revenue.
So I say "you need 12 testers to submit an app" - you answer "you dont need testers if you have a play store account -which you have if you already published an app". So we are basically back at: "You cannot publish an app unless you already published an app, else you need 12 testers".
You can avoid the 12 beta testers if you create an LLC.
Most states offer an LLC for a few hundred $ and 1 day processing time.
You can then dissolve the LLC later if you no longer want it.
> You can avoid the 12 beta testers if you create an LLC
Yeah that is an easy option. In my jurisdiction that costs above 500€ for legal paperwork (notarized stuff) and now you have to submit double-entry bookeping records and tax forms every year. THAT is not an alternative to anything. Dissolving costs around 300€ just the notary appointment. Again, am in Europe.
You can create a Wyoming LLC without any physical presence, although you’ll have to pay a service to receive any legal/court notices in state and you’ll still have to pay any taxes owed in your own country. Wyoming has no income tax, and any US federal taxes from future revenue would be owed whether you’re an LLC or not.
The cost of the registered agent is usually the biggest cost (unless you can find someone who will do it for free).
Doesnt matter. In most EU countries, you are not taxed where the company is registered, but where the majority of "management decisions" are made - in that case, where the sole director of that company lives. That is why any LLC founding still results in the same paperwork as if you would found a corporation in Europe. I know 100% for sure in Germany in Spain, you will have to declare your majority stake in your tax filings and thus trigger tax filings for the LLC - even if that LLC owes 0€ in taxes, paperwork must be filed.
Such a stupid discussion to have in the first place, suggesting forming a buisness entity to fast track your hobby app into the play store.
This may be unpopular opinion, but IMO this is a good approach from Google. If you can't get 12 people to download your app then there is no reason to spam and keep it in the Google Play. I went through this process a few times as well and while I found it frustrating as well, I believe it's a good initial filter for spammers.
Except Google is now also starting to block apk installs so the only way to share toy apps is now the Play Store. Want to share your app with 10 other people? Too bad you're less than 12.
All it does is have people pay a couple of hundred bucks on Fiverr to get chinese clickworkers do install your app.
If you compare it to the Antrophic MCP apps directory review process both Apple and Google are a sweet dream. I apply for the Antrophic MCP directroy since March (sic!) and due to constant changes in their process I had to resubmit 5 times now!! We have November, 8 months. Sometimes you get ghosted, then approved, but you can't publish because they approved an older version that isn't compatible to _their_ updated publishing process anymore and they only way to make it work is to resubmit waiting again _months_ for an approval, although it already was approved. It is a nightmare! Folks, Antrophic is the living proof that you can make an app approval and publishing process even worse then Google Play or the Apple App store! Yes! :-D I am at a point where I do not care anymore about the Claude MCP Apps directory, although our users demand it. The ChatGPT app is running great by the way and got approved and published in April.
Apple's lock down is arguably incompatible with an AI enabled world. I know plenty of non-tech friends vibe coding apps for themselves now but they can't use them on an iPhone
Why couldn’t they run it on their iPhone if the app is for themselves? You can install it directly from xcode, the problem is when you want to release it to others.
Or is the “problem” in your case the non-tech part, so not knowing how to install xcode and the developer license? The xcode part Claude can automate (once you’ve downloaded it) I guess.
...the developer license is HUGE deal
It's 100€/year for technically nothing
Imagine having to pay on windows or Mac to even run "hello world"
Oh remember the days of Visual Studio licenses, Borland licenses.. it has never been this cheap to develop for mass distribution.
I don't mean for mass distribution, obviously the 100€ seems reasonable as a low barrier of entry, I mean for personal use
You had to pay for Borland, Visual Studio VB etc for any use including personal.
They came on disks and you did not get the disk unless you paid for it first.
You can argue the last 20 years of free tools is the anomaly
Generation(s) of development grew up in that environment, it is not an anomaly but the normality for everything but apple
Visual Studio Express was free and came out in 2005
And they didn't keep grabbing your money. It was a done deal. Apple still takes 30% commission on app sales and in-app purchases beyond your Apple Developer Program. In EU, Apple charges €0.50 per annual install for every first-time install per year over a threshold of 1 million downloads, even for free apps.
Versus what? the multiple $100-200/month AI subscriptions many people have? or, more charitably, the 3-6 $20/month subscriptions most of which go unused.
I wish it wasn't there but for $100 you can install custom software you want on the phone without all the annoyances.
Also if you are struggling to find $100 then you probably own an Android device rather than iPhone.
As an android user, if you are struggling you should own an iPhone.
Longer support and usefull life, better prices and widespread expertise to repair, cheaper accessories, etc
The point is value, is hard to justify "100 bucks" as an one time payment to run some code on your phone unless you are not iper committed
It's wild if you l
This is not about money, but bootlicking corporation to let you use your device.
Now its $100, tomorrow you need to upload your passport, next month you have different limits and need to comply.
I'm pretty sure this works with a free developer account as well and you don't need the paid one to run it on your own phone
I seem to remember it only works for a few weeks before you need to reload (or rebuild) it.
With Google Play store you pay 25$ one time, but you need to find 12 beta-testers that are willing to test your app for 14 consecutive days at the same time. Then and only then you will be allowed in the play store. Sideloading has become a pain in the butt on Android just as on iOS.
My question exactly.
Im building personal apps and running on my own devices. Yeah you need a dev license, but that isn’t THAT huge of a barrier to entry.
Even a non tech person can have claude walk them through how to do it in an afternoon
This comment reads like that XKCD strip about the average person only knowing the chemical formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars.
https://xkcd.com/2501/
Ah yes, the "just install a custom CA everywhere" school of selfhosting
you have to reinstall it every week.
And, most non-techies want to share what they've made. If if daughter vibe codes an app you can bet she wants to share it with her friends.
Your daughter couldn't publish anything for Android either, unless she is of legal age, uploads her drivers license and pays $25 to Google. Sideloading on Android has become even worse than on iOS, with a 24h waiting period to enable it.
> Sideloading on Android has become even worse than on iOS, with a 24h waiting period to enable it.
How so? On Android I can sideload apks I didn't make
To enable sideloading, you have to wait 24h on the device. So no "simply pass it to your friends".
You do that only once. And on iOS you can't install any app? Only signed apps for one week at a time.
> Sideloading on Android has become even worse than on iOS, with a 24h waiting period to enable it.
In the short-term, I suppose that 24-hour period is *#@!§$%-annoying and a regression compared to the previous situation, but beyond that it's still way better than Apple where a) you have to install Xcode and build the app yourself, b) you can only install three apps concurrently and c) you need to reinstall them every seven days.
With Android, beyond that initial 24-hour waiting period, you don't need any external software, you can install an unlimited number of apps and once installed they stay installed forever.
> way better than Apple
A prison cell is way better than a sealed black box
My phone has no such delay or verification, but sure they'll roll it out eventually. Sideloading from a computer has no delay, only downloaded APKs, and that only once. You can get a developer account without ID or payment for up to 20 devices.
I think none of this should be the case, and I'll switch to a custom OS on my next device if not this one, but I don't think it's worse than iOS?
> you have to reinstall it every week.
A paid plan, with no review needed, will give you a year I believe before you have to reinstall. Only free accounts have the 7-day limit
> If if daughter vibe codes an app you can bet she wants to share it with her friends.
Testflight internal, no review. Or Testflight external, minor review (I've heard it's much faster/easier than normal app store review, I don't use it).
That's correct, but why do I have to pay Apple $99/year to install an app that I wrote on my own phone from own computer over a physical connection and not have to reinstall it every week?
Apologies, I didn't mean to insinuate that it was right that Apple charge $99 a year to install software on hardware you own. I just was pointing out there are ways around that.
Mostly that it gets around any review issues (mostly, unless you use external Testflight).
> Why couldn’t they run it on their iPhone if the app is for themselves? You can install it directly from xcode, the problem is when you want to release it to others.
Assuming you're referring to free, non-developer accounts, having to re-sign one's app is a really annoying inconvenience which should not exist.
I grow really tired of these excuses for the multi-trillion dollar company doing its best to make it difficult for users. "Just do this really annoying thing. What's the problem?"
Last I checked those apps expire after about a week and there are quite a few other restrictions, and why bother when most apps can just as well be a simple webpage which Claude has no trouble building either ;)
Because the boundary between running it yourself and having others run it would normally be fluid. It makes sense that after you run it yourself, you'd like friends and family also to run it.
Also as said in this thread, limit of 3 concurrent apps, have to reinstall every week, have to own a mac with xcode.
Many devs use TestFlight to distribute links to beta testers and friends a family. It's "free" if you pay the $99 Apple dev. The initial part is not frictionless because you still need to have your approved by Apple, but to the end users it's not any different than downloading from the App Store.
> but they can't use them on an iPhone
This is the World they themselves created by consistently supporting coeporate-controlled computing, in which they are just a guest on their own devices, so my sympathy is limited.
There have been plenty of warnings over the past 20 years that this scenario is unfolding, but people wilfully ignored that because "it just works" and "but what about my banking apps?!".
Maybe it's not appropriate to go Full Stallman on your colleagues, but have you challenged them to change their purchasing choices for the future?
It hasn't been unfolding over the last twenty years, it was like that from day one for iPhone development.
Google has a similar or even worse lock-down nowadays. 25$ fee for identification, similar submission process with all its scrutiny of answering useless questions etc.
I’ve been chafing against Apple’s iOS restrictions for a while and I agree - maybe this will push them to change.
I’d argue they need to consider a middle ground - maybe allowing the free developer account to share an app to a maximum number of people (10? 20?) and for a (much) longer period than a week.
It shouldn’t be any more difficult than sharing an artefact from Claude.
I've been waiting about two weeks for the last review for my app, I got one rejection and that took 20 days. It's a bit of a bummer but there isn't anything I can do about it.
Depending what your app is, could you consider distributing privately via TestFlight - or even making it a web app?
Doesn't apply to alllll apps - but flagging it in case you hadn't recently looked into it.. web apps can do a lot and don't charge 15%.
On iOS they can't even reliably persist user data on the device, last time I checked.
It's probably no coincidence that the only allowed browser engine on iOS doesn't provide proper PWA support.
I've got a couple PWAs I deploy off of my tailnet and use on my iPhone and iPad.
I have encountered no issues (using IndexedDB for user data) so far. If you approach database sizes larger than 1GB I believe you might run into quotas.
What I read is that if the device's storage is full, WebKit just drops your data, which would be unacceptable for a production app.
I don't know if that's true though.
I would have to test that because that is concerning but I have apparently solved that problem by accident by syncing my IndexedDBs with an API server when a connection is available.
Yeah, I tried and compared some PWA apps in my Macbook and iPad. The iPad one definitely will reload and get stuck if there is no internet connection.
> It's probably no coincidence that the only allowed browser engine on iOS doesn't provide proper PWA support.
Oh the irony too...
https://youtu.be/p1nwLilQy64
> distributing privately via TestFlight
Don't let Apple catch you doing that. Good way to get your account banhammered.
You need their permission for External TestFlight distribution anyway, otherwise you need to add everyone to the App Store Connect account to forego their reviews.
Currently suffering through rejections just to get a client’s app into the first rounder of testers’ hands.
It took us literally months to do this for a recent client project.
What made it take so long? Btw. The review for external testing happens only once per version, not per build
It usually takes a couple of days, the first time, then it's almost immediate, until the next version bump.
I use TestFlight almost from the start of a project. Great way to involve non-tech folks, and work out UI design issues quickly.
it kept sitting waiting for review for a week and then getting rejected for bullshit reasons, over and over again
> bullshit reasons
Depends on the reason. "Bullshit" is in the eye of the beholder.
I don't think that they reject for branding issues, in the TestFlight review (like they do, for the App Store -I have had my app rejected, because it had the word "finder" in its name). For example, if you change the color of the Sign in with Apple button, it will get rejected (in the App Store review -I don't know if they would reject it in the TestFlight review).
They do, however, look for things like private API access, crashes, and dodgy behavior. Even if a code path is TODO, it shouldn't crash. I just fill those with NOP functions.
Request expedited review.
You can lobby your representatives, that's what Apple does.
I have the same problem for my radio payer app.
First rejection they ask me to take a video of the app working (and they explicitly ask for a real iPhone although I did it in the emulator and it passed). Isn't that the whole point of their review to do it themselves?
Then now they ask me for documented authorization of each radio listed in the app. I keep pointing that there is already apps with the same data source as mine (radio-browser) and they keep replying the same thing.
Each round takes days or a week.
I don't think humans were involved in any part of this process (except me). I guess I will have to fake it somehow.
I have a previous app approved and I must say the process was actually better than what I had anticipated back then.
Update for my app has been in review on the App Store since November 3rd.
Meanwhile on Android updates are just flying through.
This is apple's fault entirely, not AI's. app store review sucked well before AI.
Thing X has always been terrible. X not being solved by now is implicit permission to do X at an exponential rate.
App review sucked in the early years, but for me was fine in recent years.
Reviews passing in a day, sometimes in a few hours.
It’s just a matter of time before Apple’s review process gets completely automated by AI. And I’m low-key surprised it hasn’t already been. But of course, it’s Apple. so…
IOS is such a dream for virtual instruments: Cheaper than desktop versions, portable, plenty of choice. But the web is getting better too. Plenty of excellent music apps there. The App Store is not the future and it feels good.
Would be nice to have a sort of web-vst standard for synths which are simultaneously web pages but integrate properly with DAWs.
If webkit ever started supporting HTML5 Web MIDI API [1], it would probably be over for the apps!
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/webmidi/
we also need low-latency audio and I don't know if web pages can access low-latency drivers like Asio and such... but the future is exciting :)
I'm not sure what Apple can do here; Pandora's box is open and it won't be closed. It felt like there was a flood of app releases in the early 2010s during the gold rush. I can't even imagine it now.
I noticed that Apple has been updating their documentation so developers can have less back and forth when releasing an app.
Apple has anti-spam app policies that basically limit innovation and competition in certain product categories. An extreme example would be Apple not allowing any more "sleep music apps" b/c there is enough in the store.
An investor actually approached me about buying a couple mobile apps I made b/c they are "aged" and don't need to go through the rigorous first-review approval process
My most recent two submissions were rejected, they asked me to upload videos of me playing the games on a physical device. Honestly! I’m at a loss. They would rather reject and pushback until they can just watch a video than review the app? I guess it shifts some of the approval workload back onto me? If it works, I’m still waiting, I’ll attach videos in future to skip the pain.
That sounds good.
The developer has to produce documentation of what works etc before the Apple reviewers waste time on it. Given the load of AI slop they must be getting the limiting resource is the reviewer so cut down the work they have to do.
Your logic or understanding is bad. The video is only requested after a rejection, not before submission. So Apple are not saving themselves time here, quite the opposite they are causing multiple rounds of review.
The app/game is already proven to work at the time it is compiled and again as it is uploaded and put through Apple’s first line of App Store checks.
Apple is already putting large demands on developers with enforced SDK changes and new devices, we need them to do more for us not less. Large companies might be able to eat the time required to do these videos, but as an indie developer it already takes hours or days to prepare the app store page. This is not good by any measure.
In that case they should be requesting the documentation first.
They do, as mentioned in my post above to which you are replying.
it's not just Apple. Steam game review is now taking weeks due to the amount of AI slop being published, whereas before it was 3-5 days.
I'm not sure how platforms will handle this honestly. Of course they want to curate a bit and avoid blatant malware/spam, though.
Even just internal Steamworks requests are taking 3-5x as long.
In both of these cases the platforms are absurdly profitable, 75% profit margin for Apple, fleet of mega-yachts for Steam, the solution is they stop skimping on review and hire more people to keep up.
If the reason for the higher throughput is the flood of mostly AI-generated slop apps, does it make sense to hire and spend human time reviewing them? IMO the answer is no, because there isn't an upper limit to the number of apps that can be generated.
In 2020 they had 500 reviewers and had grown to about 2 million apps, the judge in the Epic trial called them out for not hiring enough. Today they still have 500 reviewers and about 3 million apps, so you can't exclusively blame the growth on AI slop it's a combination of they should have been hiring more reviewers all along and AI slop has exacerbated their long-standing decision not to.
They have some duty to the developers who paid them for distribution rights whether they're making AI slop, manual slop or something worthwhile, and their processes should scale appropriately.
$1000 application fee would probably thin the herd.
A nicer way to frame it would be a $1000 deposit, and you get fee free sales up until the fees waived reach the deposit. It's zero cost for real games but a barrier to slop.
Probably not a bad idea. They (Steam) basically do this right now, except the deposit is only $100.
They can hire more reviewers - they say they only have 500, that's the same number they had in 2020 when the Epic judge called them out for it.
And makes around $10,000,000,000 per year off the app store: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/appfigures-apple-made-over...
They can absolutely afford to hire more.
They will not. Why would high revenue be a reason to hire more?
They look at margins and they want to optimize them, not use better margins as a reason to pursue smaller margins. Small time indie developers and businesses that earn them less than millions a month in fees are not worth their time. They’re solving this by automating more telemetry, not by hiring more junior and senior reviewers. They don’t want to take a loss on small devs.
Only way they change course is via regulations.
Or competition.
Or that more reviewers might lead to more apps which lead to more revenue.
Competition would have to come in the form of regulation given the lack of other options on iOS
I suspect Apple knows that most of their revenue comes from the top 500 casino games for children. They probably get all their reviews fast-tracked to keep them happy.
Most (by quantity) of the rest is apps that are free and don't make much money from IAP and just monetize with tons of ads. Apple doesn't get their beak wet on those so they know that even a few million more spent on reviewers wouldn't make a big difference in their own revenue.
The rest of us, we just have to wait our turn.
> I suspect Apple knows that most of their revenue comes from the top 500 casino games for children. They probably get all their reviews fast-tracked to keep them happy.
Trust me they know, that's why every single marketing page on the appstore (do not take my word for it, go check it) almost only talks about either education or productivity apps.
Or they could focus on a better developer experience (like more testers/faster turnaround) which will drive even more people to their platform. The extra investment might be worth it.
'Optimize' here seems to mean abusing the very developers who produce software for their devices. This is just greed and imho proof that markets are not self-correcting.
> I'm not sure what Apple can do here;
Hire more reviewers. Apple is making a shitload of money from App Store sales (and of course by scamming its users in many creative ways). They'd better spend it on making developers happier, not on thickening the walls of their garden.
They don’t make a shitload off the small apps like the synthesizer from this post. They aren’t going to introduce more expensive Cupertino and Cork reviewers to help that category of dev. They’re a business and will automate instead of have small time earners occupy more time on reviewer desks.
"They're a business so they'll continue pinching pennies and creating bad will" is not a well-constructed take.
Apple make a shitload of money from the app store in general, including app developer subscriptions.
The review process is already semi-automated, and hiring a few hundred human reviewers of all kinds would be a cash flow rounding error.
You still have to pay them $100 a year to even submit so it’s not like the devs are asking for free labor
Perhaps it should be $100 per update.
$100 is overly charitable. Let it be $1000.
Allow third party app stores.
Even better, allow side loading.
It's just loading, AppStore is in fact side-loading since it uses 3rd party provider.
Can't wait for this to be forced down their throats by some lawsuit.
I thought this was supposed to be allowed in Europe, due to a ruling. What happened with that? Or am I miss-remembering?
Apple complied in bad faith and it's still impossible to do direct installs on mobile.
Ugh, makes sense
They are the richest company in the world worth trillions.
You're not sure what they can do?
1) hire more people 2) let people buy apps from wherever they want.
Why do people think rich businesses will spend more? They protect their margins. Companies don’t earn more to spend more of their margin.
Only way to get what we want from Apple is regulation.
I don't think they will spend more. I think they will spend less. The can spend more, is the answer to OP question
> what Apple can do
A lot, they _can_ do almost whatever they want with their own AppStore and own business model. Including making good on the anti-trust lawsuit they've got for a decade around the world and let go of their monopoly.
We shouldn't make it sound like they _have to be_ the bad guys. Even from a business standpoint they're slowly losing the grip on their market and getting back some goodwill wouldn't be a bad thing.
And this is what happens when your phone is not a general purpose computer that can run any program you wish, either written by you or somebody else. People need to stop rewarding Apple for this behavior, and instead buy devices that support free operating systems. Somewhat ironically, one of the best options is Google's Pixel phones with Graphene, Lineage and other "custom ROMs."
> Somewhat ironically, one of the best options is Google's Pixel phones with Graphene, Lineage and other "custom ROMs."
And people also need to stop thinking in general-purpose computer only to the OS layer. A Pixel is no good to me either for precisely the same reason: it is, based on its feature set, not an (ultramobile) general-purpose computer.
What makes a bootloader-{un,re}lockable pixel not general-purpose?
I was talking about a whole feature set, not just the minimum requirement to clear enshittification by vendor.
Right, what feature do you feel it lacks that prevents it from being general-purpose?
Generally it needs to have (in addition to cameras, the mic, wireless networking, and the accessible bootloader):
1. easy-access expandable storage (e. g. dedicated uSD card slot)
2. 1-2 high-speed full-feature USB port(s)
3. 3.5 mm audio jack
4. an ergonomic, i. e. flicker-free display
5. a user-exchangeable battery
6. Batteryless operation mode
Additional (personal) niceties:
1. Active stylus support (EMR preferred)
2. Pogo pins for attachable keyboard, etc.
In other words: Ultra-mobile GP computing (and not telephony) is the first customer.
I feel like most devices don't fit this list of requirements. What devices do?
> I feel like most devices don't fit this list of requirements.
Very perceptive! :)
As a matter of fact, Samsung out of all cases got pretty close with the Galaxy Note9 [1]. I don't know about the bootloader. Didn't care back then since I only used them on the job. The other major annoyance, apart from the non-removable battery, was its display from PWM hell, which made privately owning it already a dealbraker.
We used Note9s to great effect for crime scene documentation, sasec concept prep, local security camera maintenance/analysis, etc.; the combination of annotating floor plans and photos with precision as well as taking voice notes on the move was unmatched; nothing ever came close.
Samsung itself would have to make a follow-up to the XCover6Pro (not XCover7Pro) with S-Pen support, more RAM and storage, better CPU and cameras, and boatloader access for GOS support. Hell's frozen over twice before that'll ever happen; big money's only in further enshittification. Now just "AI"-labeled.
1. [https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note9-9163.php]
It will be difficult to find a phone that does all this, but a USB hub, a flash drive and a headphone adapter would get you most of what you ask for. It won't make coffee though.
The obviousness being that you've got the general-purpose computing essentials covered without impeding safe and (more) secure handheld operation.
Hub (or dock) compatibility is also a necessity, but that's for locked-in-place or steadily-positioned operation, e. g. on the table, or from a car port.
Wait but it is? I compile and run software even on stock android phones. You can even a enable a full built in linux shell in android developer options now.
Yes, I'm aware that "general-purpose computing" as a concept is a rather malleable thing.
The only thing that makes it not a general-purpose computer is the omission of an onboard compiler.
And there is no legitimate reason for that omission, whatsoever.
Our computers are intentionally crippled so that we need to ask permission for what to do with them.
> The only thing that makes it not a general-purpose computer is the omission of an onboard compiler.
I was talking about the design aesthetics of a handheld general-purpose computing device, i. e. one that within its device-class is not overspecialized. That's largely hardware design, which obviously can't be altered as easily.
A compiler? As long as the machine let's me install all the software I need (later), and without any permission torture from "sideloading" hell, I'm good.
I mean you've got a chap in this very discussion for whom certain stock Android devices are enough cos he can run his compilers and Linux. But to me a Pixel, or any similar feature-downgraded device, is utterly undesireable; shipping one with a compiler out of the box is not even a consolation prize, lol.
Neither Android nor Graphene have a tenth of the musical instruments, effects, sequencers, etc. available to them that ios does. The closed nature of the App Store allows a software ecosystem beneficial to audio software developers. Eliminate that, eliminate the reason for developers to create these instruments.
There are no perfect platforms, there are only tradeoffs. The iOS tradeoff apparently is preferred by these developers.
Or they just want a large market share?
> The iOS tradeoff apparently is preferred by these developers.
Could be a bit of momentum. Androids audio stack started out with a completely incompetent latency of near 500ms pre Jellybean, was made a bit less terrible through the years [1], and only becoming acceptable in 2021 [2], still near 2x of iPhone from over a decade before.
Apps like garage band were so impressive because could not function on Android.
[1] https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later...
[2] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/an-update-...
iOS does not have a tenth of the musical instruments, effects or sequencers that Windows VSTs have.
It's a turtles-all-the-way-down situation. I've toured with musicians before, and they are not jamming on iPads or plugging their DAC into an iPhone. They're running full-fat computers, real Omnisphere presets and the total Melodyne suite, not the pedestrian trial versions that the App Store sells.
> The closed nature of the App Store allows a software ecosystem beneficial to audio software developers.
Why is that? Valve has sold plenty of games to Linux gamers and now has its Steam Machine, etc. So commercial software on open platforms is definitely viable.
I think this has a lot more to do with musicians with money to spend on this software are more likely to have iPhones than the closed platform.
I think it's also due to the terrible (lack of) realtime audio support on Android.
Why do you think people don't want this?
now i am curious What programs do you run on your phone that arent on app store?
F-Droid? Programs that Apple/Google won't let you download if you aren't in the right region? Anything that you wrote yourself?
I ask because i've never felt the need to do so on my iphone. So curious what i am missing out on.
Patched versions of social media apps to remove ads and add more UI customization
Unofficial YouTube clients too.
Dancing from one evil entity to the other.
I have 3 apps on the store that are inconsequential in the scheme of things and reviewers often spend at most 2 minutes on updates. Sometimes longer, but typically the longest part of the process is getting into review. The lack of transparency is genuinely irritating and everyone but Apple and their bottom line would be better served by them applying the gatekeeper security model to iOS.
Have just submitted two new apps last week and they’ve been published 2 days later. Updated them a couple of times this week and that also took around 2 days.
Not sure if it’s because I have a good track record but I only had been rejected a couple of times and even then I just had to submit a screen recording of me playing with the app to make it pass the review process.
At this rate, I feel like some kind of software product could come out that collects rejection cases for each area and domain and gets you past AI review (whether through jailbreaks, adversarial attacks, or just making the app properly).
Maybe I’m just lucky, but we’ve had under 24 hour review times for all of our iOS app reviews over the past few months, including our first submission of the app on a new account. Our Android app first release took longer at about 48 hours, and an update after they less than 24.
The article implies AI-made apps and “developer-made” are two different things entirely
aren't they?
Normally in other fields of endeavor if we can differentiate between two ways a thing was made we are thus able to split individual things into two potential sets and place them accordingly. I realize that "developers" may wish to have the two categories commingled for their own purposes but I think they should just get over themselves and realize that you can't fight the natural human tendency to separate things into groups for identifying potential differences between them.
I don’t think it’s that and I think you know that; this article had a clear agenda. There is an obvious implication that AI-made means “worse”. As a Software Engineer of 13 years and someone who makes things with AI in their spare time, I hold both to the same standard of quality. To most people it shouldn’t matter who made it, while devs have been spinning the “AI-slop” trope. At some point people are going to have to get over it.
This was a great way to learn that Pittsburgh Modular offers AUs and VSTs of their modules, thanks!
This was a few years ago, but I also got the weird (imo) requirement to record a video of the app working (not a screen recording). Not sure what they needed it for, but it got approved after that.
> My app was REJECTED from submission FOUR TIMES in row. Always same reason (eg. my app is “design spam” and “duplicates existing apps” and it is createed using “app generation template services”) as shown bellow in screenshots. Which is obvious nonsense.
You can feel the entitlement across the room from the developer. They seem to be unable to conceive that outside of their bubble there can be a real case of AI spamming that same look and feel, even if they did it by heart.
Looking at his work, it's clearly modelled after Serum (which even the article describes as "a sort of Serum 2 for iOS") so I am not sure why they think this suddenly deserves a white glove service here.
The App Store is also flooded with Synth apps, so regardless of the UI being the trigger here, I would imagine the category itself has been flagged as spammy and now has a higher bar of entry.
If anything I would use this as an opportunity to reskin and try to stand out, they're giving you a blueprint of what will perform better on the algorithm if you avoid that look if you think about it.
Or just try an Alt Store.
Everyone is entitled to run whatever the hell they want on their own device. End of.
Web page
Audio software needs low latency. Can you actually make a synth in browser that's good? And integrates with DAWs?
No
Sure, but this developer wants to publish their app through the App Store. Not the same thing as running on their own device.
Ah but it is!
I am not aware of a way to publish an app without an App Store.
At least on Android you can make them self updating and not care about rest of the ecosystem
You can install development builds on your own iPhone, you just need to enable Developer Mode: https://docs.expo.dev/guides/ios-developer-mode/
Technically, he can run his app on his device.
technically, anyone can grab a copy of source, put their phone into developer mode and install the app too.
But- practically, it's hard.
You only get 4 application slots on devices in dev mode for example and I think they also expire.
I tried creating an internal app for my company and was gobsmacked that I didn't have any sane method to distribute it short of taking full ownership of everyones devices via MDM.
You are of course not allowed to publish "internal" apps to Testflight (or the App Store, but that's more obvious).
and you have limitations on app ids. Apple sucks…
You're entitled to a way to have others try you software on devices they own that doesn't involve paying Apple $99/year for the privilege.
Is entitlement always a problem? Maybe if apple didn't try their best to hold a monopoly on app distribution for a large percentage of the mobile userbase, developers wouldn't feel frustrated in this regard. Who's apple to decide which apps aren't allowed because they "duplicate existing apps", and how fairly is that even applied? Are calculators allowed on the app store? It seems awfully like they duplicate existing functionality.
Ok but now explain why there are tons of absolute trash vibe coded apps that barely do anything in the app store?
First, I am not trusting them at face value. They are building a copycat of Serum and most likely could be doing some level of vibe-coding themselves.
Second, to your point, say we trusted them, it's a chicken or the egg problem. After all the trash entered the space it became flagged and a scale/moderation issue.
The larger problem is the bad actors.
I'm not sure why Apple needs to be policing who gets to compete for a given functionality. Malware? Yeah, for sure, police it. Non-functional software? Maybe, if it's really bad. That's more or less a scam.
But simply because you're solving the same problem others are? No, that's horrible overreach. We have copyright and patent law to deal with outright copies. It's not Apple's place.
“Just try an alt store” is a condescendingly flippant comment - there is near zero market for iOS alt stores and most people in most countries have no access either.
My above comment is not an excuse for design spam. The design spam rule is necessary. Your feedback is not.
Synths have never been a high profit business on iOS. And small earners are not a priority for Apple review. There’s a business case for not being bothered with most indie apps.
To suggest there’s categorically no room for innovation or value add with new synth products is just ignorant though.
There is also near zero market for more Synth Apps at this point so I'm not sure what you want here.
It's like when the App Store started, someone made a Flashlight App and it was cool. We sure had enough of that by now. Now that AI turned everyone into a maker and the bar is lower in a world of abundance, it's only natural that things shift in terms of expectations for distribution.
This is how new markets take shape too, YouTube became so trash that now platforms such as Nebula came out as a business.
I’m genuinely not sure if you’re doing a bit, especially after explicitly calling out the “entitlement” of the development.
Is “we don’t think there’ll be a market for this” a defensible reason to disqualify an app from the App Store? What’s even your point? You are just looking to be argumentative and pretty clearly have no interest in actually discussing this.
I'll take the callout, I did get emotional. Reason being is because I have bought over 20 synth apps and have worked in the music industry. Looking at the app and the way they reacted to not getting approved made me upset.
If you’re going to suggest an alt store, customers globally should be able to access the alt store you’re suggesting.
So far in the U.S., that’s not an option. You likely already know this, which makes it a flippant argument.
An Alt iOS store isn't accessible to everyone in every country either as far as I know.
I wouldn't describe it as entitlement. I think one of the issues I would have if I was in this situation is that the developer membership is paid for and the service provider (Apple) is actively refusing to let you engage in part of what you did pay for (the ability to publish apps on the App Store). You can bet that Apple won't give you a refund of that membership fee.
They provided reasons and it is within the terms of service of what you paid for, they were also able to appeal, and I suggest you check the app and the reference app to which the claim is being made against.
I mean they are entitled to it in a way. You pay Apple 99 Dollars a year to be able to distribute your apps on the store. Why should apple care if it is design spam or a duplicate of an existing app? Most of the apps available in the store would check those boxes too.
Apple has been famously strict about App Store submissions since it started… these comments confused about it make me feel old!
"Or just try an alt store." What alt store? Pure bs. You must be an Apple shareholder. They are prone to posting delusional excrement like this.
> You can feel the entitlement across the room from the developer.
Apple felt they were entitled to insert themselves as an all powerful gate keeper in program distribution, the least they could do is not be shit at it.
I dunno, in the jailbreak days, some repos were also terrible to get your app approved in (bigboss?).
For those of us who believe in free markets, yeah we should be entitled to sell more or less any legal software. It shouldn't be Apple's place to police it. Europe had the right idea breaking their app store monopoly.
Audiothing plugins are my faves for years, strange that trusted devs don't get the benefit of the doubt and have to wait in the same queue as new unproven devs.
The pile of open and/or hackable music hardware flooding the market makes iOS obsolete for most of my music use cases. I'm working on synths and performance tools, and had planned to sign up for an Apple Developer account to distribute them for both Mac and iOS, but even last year when I was first looking into it (pre-AI for me and most of the development world) it was already apparent that getting permission to sell apps to Apple users was a shitty process and maybe not worth the trouble. Now it seems to be even more toxic, as the queue is filled with slop. I think I'll probably focus on stuff like the FM-1 and the upcoming hackable APC or Behringer gear.
I also have been in the synth/audio realm for a while, and the situation with MVAVE FM-1[1] et al., is something that has been a long time coming.
Musicians love to tweak their instruments - the rigid paths of purchased plugins and soft synths is pretty much over. There are so many wonderful, amazing things being done - by the hour, literally - that someone who has been in this world for a while might be wondering just what to do with themselves. By the time I've worked out the design/architecture for a new synth feature or concept, there are already 20 or 30 vibe-coded variants out there in different forms..
Like all good music-tech hackers I keep a lab/ folder with F/OSS projects, and as I review disk space on the regular I notice that my lab/FM-1/ folder grows day by day by day with absolutely astonishing bits of code, some 80+ projects in all (and by no means complete), a gource rendering of the repo collection reveals an extremely vibrant and flourishing scene. And as I do these code reviews (because who isn't doing code reviews these days), I am reminded of a very cold, hard, sharp and penetrating fact: its about the hardware.
The synth world is being completely refactored, as a marketplace and as a community, by the AI revolution. The only ones getting anywhere interesting with it, though, are the ones building the hardware ...
[1] MVAVE-FM1 is an extremely important lesson. It is, 101%, a F/OSS success story. It began life as a host for a very nice synth engine - is is now a host for the hottest synth engine of the next twenty minutes!! A relative outsider has done the impossible: make something great, ultra-cheap, relatively available .. and now AI has cracked it wide, wide open - just as it is doing with cracking open the very expensive nuts of very very, very expensive competing synthesizers. The $60 FM-1 is outshining a whole fleet of $600- and higher devices, and the custom firmware circuit is not going back in the bag.
The DSP guys have their hair on fire. So the race is on to create the next platform. While Apple are gate-keeping their garden, Akai, and Korg, and .. so, so many others .. are about to have their platforms become the hottest place for developers to do things, at another end of the scale.
Its a crazy year to be a digital musician. We literally don't need Apple any more.
I m waiting for weeks to just enroll in their developer program, that i have paid for. Are they deliberately stalling everything to stop people from putting more stuff in the app store? I m going to go ahead and release the android version and make sure to badmouth apple to their users. life is short
Similar issue with shopify apps
I am more interested in the fact so many people are spamming the app store. What are they hoping for actually? If you can write a prompt for it, anyone can do it. There's no value in an app like before. I think those times are over.
Maybe the "democratization" of it will bring in fresh ideas. Maybe not. But anyway basically no one will make any money or have any success off these vibe coded apps.
Tens of millions of people finally have the ability to make apps. So they are.
But for billions of people it's still way too high of friction for now. Especially on mobile and iOS. So they download apps.
There's still success to be had too. Distribution is all that's ever really mattered. If you have money to advertise or authority in some niche... you can get users and customers, no matter the slop.
Most of the new people making apps will learn that the hard way like the rest of us, but some will succeed.
You have to rebuild/reinstall the app every week if it’s not published to the App Store. Vibe coded iOS apps are basically worthless if you don’t publish them via the App Store. I would bet much of the flood would be avoided if you could permanently install your own vibe coded apps.
Apple and Google are a mobile cartel, they need to be broken up.
This is absurd.
If people want the editorialized 'safety' of an App Store, they can use it, that's fine, but there's no reason to stop people from buying apps for their phone from wherever they want.
There are reasons. You just don’t like the reasons.
There are no 'reasons' that people should be banned from installing software on their own devices.
I'm getting reviews completed within 24 hours currently. I wonder if there's just a shortage of reviewers trained on the specific risks surrounding synth plugins.
We’re about two months on an initial release. It’s complicated, nothing that could just be a PWA. I started “early” so we wouldn’t have to sweat it, and now it’s coming down to a line.
The title is too friendly to Apple. Sure the flood of apps is making their lives harder, but also remember that they choose to force everyone through this and you have to PAY them to do their job this badly.
HN will continue to buy iPhones and licking the boot. Nothing will change.
It's more than that, they choose to do the absolute least they can and pocket immense profits. In 2021 the judge in the Epic case called them out for only having 500 reviewers now it's 2026 and they still only have 500 reviewers.
https://apple.com/app-store
> Every week, nearly 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 130K apps.
And they actually updated that in the middle of last year, it's not just something they forgot it used to say:
> Every week, over 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 100K apps.
In a land of commodified apps, the platform has all the power and the dev has none. Like at this point, they could up their cut to 90% of revenue. There would be an outcry and many devs would leave. But in the end getting even 10% of the revenue of an app you whipped together by telling claude to "make an app, no mistakes" is too good to refuse.
I wonder if Apple is genuinely having issues or they just have internal rejection targets per genre or have some criteria tied to expected sales.
The size of target demographics of music creation apps are basically zero. Even if the music created were to be sold on Apple Music to be played million times, that won't get reasoned and traced back to be attributed to these apps. These are likely a "waste of disk that nobody buys and won't lead to MAS user retention", in a narrow view concerning just the Mac App Store.
App Store review process was always known to be inconsistent, unfair, unpredictable, just wrong, a reviewer gacha gambling of its own, etc. etc., but, I mean, causes of rejections mentioned in the article sounds a bit bogus, like bad fault tree analysis.
To me it seems like the core problem here is that Apple has implemented a really crappy AI review process. In particular it seems much dumber than just asking Claude to review an app.
It should be possible to build a review process based on AI that is both faster and more accurate than the 2020-era human-based review process. This isn't rocket science. Are they trying to cheap out by using bad AI models? Or is this some corporate policy where they can only use an "Apple model"? Or do they not have people who are good at developing AI-based workflows?
Hard to say from the outside, but this doesn't seem like some sort of inevitable thing, it just seems like Apple has built a bad process here.
They use Claude for coding so I doubt it’s an apple only thing
My last app was a fairly significant update, and took about 80 hours. In the past, this would normally take less than 12.
But I remember when the app would wait over a week for review, so it's still better than Ye Days of Yore.
I'm almost positive that the reason is a tsunami of slopplets. I know a couple people, just in my orbit, that vibe-coded their first iOS apps. One is a seasoned engineer, and his app is pretty good. The other...not so much, but it did get approved (faster than my update).
Apple's app review process has always been a silly game. I have a music playing app, and every actual screenshot gets rejected in review for "displaying copyrighted content" (album art). And the terms of review say the screenshots must come from the app, not be mockups. So dumb. I have a fake music collection of fake artists and albums that I load to generate screenshots ... colossal waste of time.
> Developing and releasing a VST plugin is simple. You set up a website, upload your installers, set a price, and you’re good to go.
I don't disagree with the critique of Apple's policies, but boy this made me roll my eyes.
A company I'm familiar with had their app rejected for "App does not contain means to delete accounts"
Then all subsequent ones were rejected "Developer provided test account stopped working"
Logs show that the tester used the "delete my account" function..
As the only customer service available is an uncaring LLM, the only solution that worked was to keep the "Delete my account" button in the app, and make it a NOP on the server side.
This is my experience with app review. They’ll flag things as the exact opposite of what they are in reality. It’s like Apple intentionally hired the worst people to randomly gatekeep the App Store.
We “solved” this by making the delete my account button send you a confirmation email to the email associated with the account. Reviewers can press the button, but they can’t receive the confirmation email, so the account does not get deleted.
Brilliant!
This seems fine - and fairly easily fixed with more human reviewers. Maybe they can actually earn the 30% tax now!
I love how poor the writing in this article is. It gives me hope that not everyone has switched to AI.
By 2028, captcha will be dead and to log in to a site you’ll need to give a hot take that an LLM wouldn’t generate…
One thing before you enter… Was it true that Treyvon Martin was safe at home and his girlfriend convinced him to go fight George Zimmerman? Explain how that changes the narrative you were told repeatedly.”
Here is the world's tiniest violin playing just for Apple. Their anti-competitive policies on app distribution mean people literally cannot distribute their apps without their acceptance. EVEN TO THEIR OWN FUCKING PHONE (unless you're willing to re-sign your application EVERY FUCKING WEEK). This "problem" is going to become exponentially "worse." I'm using quotes because cheap and ubiquitous software is not a problem. It's amazing, and Apple preventing people from freely exchanging software is an affront to the entire space.
Fuck Apple. Open up iPhones.
>It was over a month of back-and-forth, so I threw my hands up and released it audio-only for now. What we will do is bundle the MIDI build into the binary so both AUv3s install.
Oh, so they are trying to do a soft bait and switch; where an app developer makes an app, splits its functionality, and sells both on the app store. They hope that someone buys the first app, which is missing basic functionality, not realizing they have to buy a second app to get the additional expected features. Like if you buy a video converter app that doesn't let you convert to an MP4 unless you buy a second "MP4 version" video converter app. Scummy behavior, glad Apple blocked it.
But wait, that's not all! There are so many more nightmares in store for you!
There is a surge of vibe coded apps in the iOS community.
Some of them are good - generally by musicians or sound designers who couldn't code.
Many are utter trash, designed by developers who have barely any musical taste and simply told Claude to make some glitchy reverb pedal or groovebox. They use AI to write the copy for the app store and leave the UI as default (navy with fixed width headers, often looking like more like a spreadsheet than a synth). Sometimes trying to charge as much as $30 for it. It's a scourge but on the upside, most of them have now got their dopamine fix and moved onto something else.
Rare Apple W
Siri can now review apps.
> you could wait three weeks only to have it rejected. I’m in daily contact with iOS developers. Many have lost their former euphoria; instead, they express disillusionment and doubt that things will ever be the same.
Who has ever released an iOS app and has "former euphoria"? The process been utterly frustrating for many, many years at this point, and it is a running gag among iOS developers how stupid your rejections can get.
Yes, everything is getting hammered seemingly, took me a month to get new account verified on Steamworks, which used to take two weeks. Lots of places face longer review times, some places seem to double-down on automating as much as possible, without really having sufficient rigor for it in reality.
Couldn’t help myself, asked Claude for the most iconic post complaining about developing Apple software every year since iOS came out.
2007 — John Gruber, "WWDC 2007 Keynote News" This was his reaction to Jobs telling developers to build web apps instead of real ones. Its best-known line: "If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it."
2008 — Fraser Speirs, "App Store: I'm Out" The battle lines were drawn when an Apple representative reviewing submissions for the App Store rejected a program called Podcaster for duplicating iTunes. Speirs then vowed never to write another iPhone app for the store "as currently constituted." Runner-up: the anger over the SDK's secrecy agreement (NDA), which Apple dropped in October after admitting it placed "too much of a burden" on iPhone developers.
2009 — Paul Graham, "Apple's Mistake" Graham wrote that the App Store is an ongoing karma leak. Pair it with Joe Hewitt quitting the Facebook iPhone app the same month: "I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process."
2010 — Lee Brimelow (Adobe), "Apple Slaps Developers in the Face" This was about rule 3.3.1, which banned apps built with cross-platform tools like Flash. Brimelow ended it with: Go screw yourself Apple. (coverage)
2011 — Readability's open letter to Apple "We believe that your new policy smacks of greed," wrote Rich Ziade, Readability's creator. Apple reversed itself within days. (coverage)
2012 — Marco Arment, "The Mac App Store's future of irrelevance" His target was the new sandboxing rules: "leaving is often a better option, or the only option, for the affected developers". Runner-up: Wil Shipley's essay arguing the Mac App Store needs paid upgrades.
2013 — Ken Case (Omni Group) on OmniKeyMaster (the weakest year) Omni tried to offer discounted upgrades to Mac App Store buyers and had to back down: "My apologies: I'm afraid we will not be able to offer upgrade pricing to our Mac App Store customers after all." (coverage)
2014 — Jared Sinclair, "A Candid Look at Unread's First Year" His sales numbers set off the "indie apocalypse" debate. Runner-up: Apple ordered PCalc's calculator widget removed while featuring it. Apple then backed down possibly due in part to the firestorm of press and social media criticism.
2015 — Bohemian Coding, "Leaving the Mac App Store" (Sketch) Gruber's verdict on it: "The Mac App Store is rotting, at least for productivity software."
2016 — Bogdan Popescu, "Dash and Apple: My Side of the Story" Apple shut his developer account. He published a recorded call in which they want me to write a blog post in order to restore my account. One caveat for your article: Apple said the account was linked to almost a thousand fraudulent reviews.
2017 — Matt Gemmell, "Damage" His thesis: "No company has done as much damage to the perceived value of software, and the sustainability of being an independent developer, as Apple."
2018 — The Developers Union open letter It asked Apple for free trials for apps and a "more reasonable revenue cut." (coverage)
2019 — Daniel Ek, "Time to Play Fair" (Spotify) Spotify's CEO compared Apple's rules to inviting you to a match on our ping-pong table and then forcing you to play blindfolded while we change the rules throughout the game.
2020 — DHH's Twitter thread about the Hey email app (archived on hey.com) "I will burn this house down myself, before I let gangsters like that spin it for spoils." Probably the most famous thread in this whole history.
2021 — Kosta Eleftheriou's thread on scam apps It opened with "The App Store has a big problem": copycat scam apps were outselling honest developers while Apple took its cut. (coverage)
2022 — Judgment call The most-seen post was Elon Musk's "Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?" (it got quickly tagged by Community Notes). For a working developer's complaint, use Alin Panaitiu's post about being rejected for being "too similar to a website".
2023 — Eric Migicovsky and Beeper Mini Beeper Mini brought iMessage to Android, and Apple kept blocking it. By late December Beeper gave up, with Canadian CEO Eric Migicovsky writing in a blog post that Beeper "can't win" against Apple.
2024 — Tim Sweeney's thread on the EU rules Apple's response to the EU's Digital Markets Act was, he wrote, "a devious new instance of Malicious Compliance", with plenty more "hot garbage" in it. (coverage)
2025 — David Smith, "The Forgotten Customer" "They aren't trying to win me over by being excellent; they are assuming my loyalty through strong-arm tactics and intransigence." Runner-up: the backlash to Apple's Liquid Glass redesign, as in this line collected by Michael Tsai: "Liquid Glass has killed my motivation and desire to develop anything for Apple platforms."
2026 (so far) — Marco Arment on App Review delays "App Store review delays are back to Shoemaker-era levels." Many blame a flood of AI-generated apps. That makes a neat bookend to 2008, which was also about waiting on App Review. (Mastodon) Runner-up: Jeff Johnson's "Small ways the App Store could be improved for developers".