Update, August 15. This has gone from a queue problem to something else, and I would like this
on the record.
THE RECORD
July 31 - Version 1.0 submitted.
August 4 - Expedited review requested. No response, then or since.
August 5 - Developer Support case 20000128844197 opened. One status reply on August 12, twelve
days later.
August 5 - Rejection 1, guideline 2.3.7: a price appeared in a screenshot. Fixed the same day.
submission reviewed on August 5.
August 12 - Rejection 3, guideline 4.1(c) again, this time the name only. The brand was removed
from the title entirely.
August 14 - Rejection 4, guideline 2.1: a seven-point questionnaire about the app, with no issue
identified in the app itself. Answered the same day, with a demo video recorded on a physical
iPhone against real hardware.
August 14 - Rejection 5, guideline 4.3(a), fifteen minutes after that reply.
Sixteen days, five rejections, five different guidelines. Not one of them was raised in the round
before it, although in every case the material being objected to was already in the build and
metadata that had just been reviewed.
THE PART I CANNOT RECONCILE
The August 14 rejection cites guideline 4.3(a) and states that the app "shares a similar binary,
metadata, and/or concept as apps submitted to the App Store by other developers, with only minor
differences."
Guideline 4.3(a), as published, reads: "Don't create multiple Bundle IDs of the same app (for
example, submitting a separate map app for every city in the world instead of a single worldwide
map that allows users to search any city)."
That is a rule about one developer creating duplicates of their own app. It has nothing to do with
other developers' apps. The text quoted in my rejection belongs to 4.3(b). I have one app and one
Bundle ID.
It also arrived fifteen minutes after my previous reply. A binary comparison was not performed in
fifteen minutes. What was looked at was the store listing.
I am not raising this to argue a technicality. I am raising it because I cannot fix a problem that
is described by the wrong rule, and because I was not told which element of the listing was at
fault. When I asked which part - icon, screenshots, keywords or functionality - the answer
available to developers is that App Review does not provide that detail.
I fixed it anyway, by guessing, and the guesses were substantial: a new app icon that no longer
resembles physical hardware, a completely new colour identity across the entire interface, new
screenshots, and revised keywords. That work is in the submission now under review.
WHAT THIS APP ACTUALLY IS
Before writing a line of it I went through around 62 apps in this category and roughly half a
million publicly posted user reviews of them, and built the app around the complaints that repeat
in those reviews and are answered by nobody: the app cannot find the device and there is no support
to ask; volume does nothing on TVs that do not pass it through the player, and the advice given is
to use the remote the user has already lost; typing is sent one character at a time and is
unusable; headphone listening is advertised and does not work; the remote does not fit one hand.
The app answers each of those. Support is built into the product, volume is negotiated directly
with the television, text entry synchronises the whole field, private listening works, and there is
a one-hand layout. It is not a template, not a purchased codebase, and it contains no third-party
SDKs. It is free, with no advertising and no subscription.
Whether that is enough to clear 4.3 is App Review's call to make. But it has never been made: no
reviewer has yet described a single thing about the app itself.
WHAT I AM ASKING FOR
I am not asking to skip the queue and I am not asking for approval. Three things:
- That someone with authority read the full review history of App ID 6795405234 as a sequence,
rather than as five unrelated tickets, and form a view on whether this app has actually been
reviewed.
2. That if 4.3 is applied again, the rejection names the element - icon, screenshots, keywords,
name, or functionality. One word would be enough. Without it I am changing things at random and
calling it compliance.
3. That the citation error be corrected, so the next developer who receives this template is told
which rule they broke.
Expedited review, email to App Review, a Developer Support case, this thread, and replies in
Resolution Center: four of those five produced no human response.
And a question to anyone who has been through 4.3, genuinely asking: did a Resolution Center reply
ever resolve it for you, or did it only ever clear after you changed something and resubmitted?
Did App Review ever name the element? Searching these forums I find many 4.3 threads and not one
where correspondence resolved it. If someone has the counter-example, I would like to read it.
App ID 6795405234, Team AGKH5Z8JXY. Support case 20000128844197, open since August 5
