It could happen to you (why my apps were rejected x 4)

So far my experience with the Apple App Store (both mobile and desktop) was rather uneventful. I submitted my first iPhone app 18 months ago. I keep submitting either new app versions or new apps once or twice a month since then. So far I was rejected 4 times (none were terminal).

First rejection (do not panic)

My first rejection came from my first Mac App store submission (ColorPlex). The app is a glorified color calculator. Among other things, it allows you to keep a scrapbook of colors you worked with and share some items from this scrapbook. This sharing functionality was the reason for rejection.

 My guess is that a person who reviewed the app reacted to word “e-mail” in the tooltip (plus envelope in the icon) and was expecting that once s/he clicked on the button an e-mail application should be launched. S/he clicked, nothing (visible) happened, s/he rejected the app. The e-mail that informed me about rejection contained a link to the “Rejection Appeal Board” (or something like this). I clicked the link, explained the issue and a few days later the app was approved!

Second rejection (do not mess with Google™)

My most rejected app so far is a virtual activism app - Angry Tomato. This little app was rejected twice for completely unrelated reasons. First of all, it took almost forever for this app to be approved. Not sure what was going on, but it took Apple very long time just to reject it for the first time. Reason for rejection was rather curious. One of the app’s screens showing Google Map (see below).



The navigational gimmick for the app was that on each screen you have 4 buttons (one in each corner). As you can imagine, button in the left bottom corner was partially obstructing “Google” watermark. Apparently, it is a cardinal sin from Google’s point of view and enough to have your app to be rejected :(. I re-worked navigation (removed the left bottom button from the map screen) and re-submit the app. Long long time later, I got the second rejection notice. Bummer.

Do not mess with Apple (payment process)

Let me get this straight: the Angry Tomato app does not do ANYTHING money-related. However, it did not prevent Apple from rejecting it for violating payment processing policies. Unfortunately (for the app), one of the app’s screens was displaying an actual web page from the NGO that organized the campaign implemented by the app. The really unfortunate bit was that if you keep clicking on different buttons/menus after a while you can navigate to the page which this NGO uses to collect donations. According to Apple, this is absolute No-No. Funnily enough, Apple is OK with people navigating to the very same page in Safari, but it is absolutely prohibited to have any kind of non-Apple payment-related content “inside” the app. In this case solution was to make all “external” links forced to be open in Safari.

Do not run ahead of a train (of Apple innovations)

My last to date rejection was not a result of anything been wrong with the app itself (MapPocket), but with what I wrote in the “What’s New” blurb for a new version of the app. Version 2.1 of the app was the first version that was built and tested to run on iOS 5.0 (which was not publicly available at the time). All it took to be rejected is to add “Ready for iOS 5.0” at the end of “What’s New”. To be fair, Apple did not ask me to re-submit binary. All I had to do was to remove that sentence from the description.