hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
If being shown or admitting to their mistake was something they were cool with, this post wouldn’t exist
🔥 Score 78.6
AppForge: App Store Review Navigator
Developers often face unpredictable App Store rejections and lengthy approval times, especially when their apps overlap with existing categories like fortune‑telling or printing. AppForge offers real‑time compliance scoring, category‑differentiation insights, and a predictive approval engine to streamline submissions and reduce rejection risk.
Quantitative Score Breakdown
complaint frequency
30
growth rate
11.11
competition density
10.26
monetization potential
10.7
technical feasibility
7.5
search interest
9
Evidence Signal (21)
Raw Complaint Loghn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
> They don't want 100 apps that do the exact same thing.I read it as the "insane" part parent is pointing at.It's nothing new, has been going on basically since the existence of the App store and Apple has explicitly built their whole business to put themselves as the arbiter of who gets to have their app on people's phones.Still it's healthy that from times to time we stop and shout "that whole situation is insane" (short of finding a way to actually do something about it)
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
i put tarot + astrology in the same bucket (and, it appears after some quick searches, so do astrologers and tarot-readers or however you call them)>So that's it, they need to remove the live tarot reading.dark hours doesnt have live tarot reading.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
It's been selective for sure. I have a macOS app that has been approved within a day. There are two apps I submit for a client both have cleared review twice in the past two weeks within 24 hours.On the other hand I have a personal iOS app that normally doesn't take long to approve that's been waiting two weeks.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
The guideline:(b) Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they a
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
You’re precisely right, and of course there’s no possible way on Earth that we could create a safe way to allow users to install apps outside of the blessed path. No matter how many steps people have to go through, even if they have to pass a special exam to prove their competence, even if they have to sign something that says they could lose their life savings and submit it to a court to document this fact. There’s just not a single possible way to protect people to an adequate degree.That the gatekeeper and government benefit from this arrangement is just a happy accident.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
Look up "wireless printing" in the App Store sometime. As best I can tell, one or two actors have spammed the entire category with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of subscription-heavy repackagings of CUPS drivers as iOS apps. They all have very similar blue line-art icons of a printer, similar preview images with similar typography, and are all crammed full of subscription options.They are probably making a killing on people who forgot about or can't figure out how to cancel the $4.99/week subscription on the top 20-30 of these apps.All this while of course the one app you've been working on for a
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
I'm sure the number of submissions has gone up exponentially due to AI.Since real people review apps, Apple should charge per app / version submission.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
There are two big problems with this (not that Apple’s caprice is the only alternative):1. The vast majority of people are Grandma, and they do not have a Johnny available to administer their tech. Most people are not technical.2. The vast majority of Grandmas will follow instructions on a “how do I share cute photo” website even when that website directs them to dig deep into configuration settings and ignore six “are you sure you want to allow this app to fully remotely control your device?” warnings. Even if Grandma has a healthy suspicion of scams, when she is instead trying to accomplish
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
You really can't just imagine Apple is doing a shit job.None of what you say can explain that Apple reviewers falsely accuse an app of being astrology when absolutely nothing proves it and double down when shown they are wrong. Again, absolutely nothing there could be explained by an "exponential number of submissions" nor solved by charging developers (even more than they already do!).Stop defending the indefensible.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
Why not just lie? The white lie is the most expedient thing to get the results you want, which is getting the app into the app store. It's not a slippery slope into a total moral decay of you as a human being. If a friend is hiding from an abusive partner, and that partner asks where your friend is, telling the truth would put your friend in danger, so lying is an important skill to have. The lie in this case gets past a pointless requirement.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
What's so bad about tarot cards? I put it into the same pot as all the other religious stuff, all just believes.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
The words astro-nomy and astro-logy are similar, but this is no "fluke".There's a Wikipedia article with some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomyI imagine astronomers have been sighing resignedly at dinner parties for a couple of millenia:In the Hellenistic world, the Greek words 'astrologia' and 'astronomia' were often used interchangeably, but they were conceptually not the same.In his compilatory work Etymologiae [c. 625], Isidore of Seville noted explicitly the difference between the terms astronomy and astrology (Etymologiae, III, xxvii) and the same distinction
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
Apple has extremely/problematically vague guidelines about what constitutes spammy apps.https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#des...> Don’t submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. Opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades App Store discovery, reduces overall app quality, and harms both users and developers. Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
It’s a shame that all these people that are using AI to code are using it to make iOS apps. Even the open-source ones are nice but you can’t install yourself unless you pay $99/year to Apple. Why not just make a great web app that does that job?I have a terminal in the web app that I use to code on my laptop. I wanted to make a native app for my phone, but using Tailscale and just accessing the website on my phone is way better and I’m not dependent on app stores at all.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
It's a fine app, but I'm not sure why gruber is glazing it so hard... is he not able to spot something so clearly built by AI? it's one of the better ones but it's got all the hallmarks. I'd be surprised if it's maintained a year from now.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
They are, but times vary between the iOS vs. the Mac App Store. I recently submitted a new app to the Mac App Store and it took about one week to get initially approved (with one rejection because I had the word "Mac" in the app description (they said it's redundant since they're all Mac apps anyway...). Could've been a quick regex check in the form submission, but anyway, after the initial approval any subsequent feature submission afterwards usually got approved within 2-3 hours, same day, which is pretty good IMHO.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
> My immediate thought upon clicking the link referenced in the article, is that the first thing I see is at first glance looks like astrological signs taking up the entire height of the page.Sadly this is unavoidable as constellations are used in astronomy and astrology. They both also use letters and numbers. That doesn't mean they're the same thing.> Something that I think folks really need to pay attention to, however, is the first impression. The app reviewer doesn't just hit a reject button and call it a day.With respect I think you need to reread the actual blog post about the app rejec
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
I’ve developed iOS and Android apps, store approvals are always a crap shoot, and it’s not just approvals, it’s paperwork… sudden rejections over something that was fine months earlier and getting pointed to a document that could mean ANYTHING.I got rejected with a screenshot from an app that doesn’t have anything like the screenshot, it took me several rejections to realize someone reviewer watched some old YouTube video I submitted ages ago and didn’t like something that was fine before…. They have a login where they can see the first page , I gave it to them , but they chose to reject becau
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
> Since real people review apps, Apple should charge per app / version submission.Or they could let developers upload apps to another app store. Apple isn't reviewing them out of charity, they're doing it to enforce a monopoly where they get a 30% cut of every developer's income.
hn • r/hackernews
Comment on: App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
> Hell, you'll get in trouble if your gasoline is the wrong color.You've missed my point even though it's right in front of you. You won't get in trouble for using your Apple device in non-approved ways because it doesn't let you. Would you ban cars for everyone because it's not safe for grandma to drive anymore? Probably not - so why lock down devices for everyone?> Do we not take steps to try and reduce murder?Not directly? Gun/knife control probably helps but people willing to risk the consequences of murder are not going to care about breaking more laws to get illegal weapons. Or just use
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Analyze Complaint Signals
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2
Scope Core MVP
Build a minimalist solution focused exclusively on solving "Developers often face unpredictable App Store rejections and lengthy approval times, especially when their app..." without feature bloat.
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Directly engage users in subreddits and developer forums who expressed frustration to offer early access beta invites.
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