> But that’s not what happened at all. Godier proceeded through a series of escalations up to the App Review Board and the Review Board responded that they determined the original rejection was valid because, I shit you not, “We understand that the app includes a live tarot reading feature.”
> It has no tarot function, no horoscopes, and nothing that I, or anyone else I’ve asked, would associate with astrology.
I have dealt with the Byzantine App Store bureaucracy before. What you do here, is you submit a new version, pretty much identical to the previous one, with the comment “tarot function removed”.
In my last SRE role I was the unfortunate victim of having to maintain a mobile app submitted to both the Android and iOS app stores. I would never wish it on my worst enemy. It was the one thing that I could absolutely _not_ guarantee any sort of reliability with. It was all up to the random person who happened to review the current release and the release process could be as quick as a day in the best circumstances or up to two weeks if we got a particularly difficult reviewer. They seem to have absolutely no context sharing between reviews.
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 because of an old video.
I recently signed up for a personal dev account for the play store and I have to get 12 friends with android devices to “test” it before they’ll consider my app at all…
That is to say I have to go online and horse trade with 12 people (hell if I know who these people are or what their unapproved apps do…) and get them to test mine if I test theirs. That alone is suspicious kinda behavior but google all but requires it now.
Meanwhile on my work account I’m publishing just fine.
It's a massive problem that mobile apps are most users favorite way to consume programs yet are one of the few forms of distribution being gatekept by two massive and opinionated companies. It feels like the slow creeping rot at the foundation of the premise (and promise) of technology and the internet.
Which makes this a good time to remind everyone about the Keep Android Open movement:
> "Starting in 2027*, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID."
This kind of thing reminds me of why I've always felt there shouldn't be a gatekeeper. Add your repos, install your apps. Folks should be allowed to have more than one repo to install apps from.
I've published both iOS and visionOS apps, and my favorite rejection came from visionOS. When you click a link to open it in Safari, the system uses an existing Safari window if available. The app was rejected because the link didn’t work... the reviewer had Safari open somewhere outside their field of view. Approved on appeal :)
as much as i loathe astrology, im not sure why astrology would be blanket banned in the first place.
and i am surprised that apps like "Night Sky" (great app, no affiliation) made it past review if the app store reviewers are incapable of telling the difference.
I wonder what the internals of the App Store process are. For most app approval processes you can tell because you'll get connections from the Philippines etc. so I assume what's going on here is that these reviewers have a range of English proficiency with a median below what an American developer is used to. Then the rest is just hallucination from the human, guessing at what they're looking at.
I 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 appeared later in the texts of Arabian writers.
The arbitrariness of app store review hasn't been the greatest on the Google side, for me lately anyway. I got dinged for having an E-rating for my TV show info app that displays an official promo image for an episode of Landman, where a character has a wound with some blood on his face.
I pointed out that there were a couple other E-rated apps that show the exact same image, and many more T-rated ones that only warn of "In-App Purchases" — no "Violence" label. One of the latter is the official Google TV app [0], so I sent some screenshots of that, and asked if maybe they were "crushing the competition" by avoiding their own review process, to see if that would escalate my case (no such luck).
Many years ago, like in 2017, my wife and I designed a dating app that was based on astrological matching. We knew it was tongue in cheek and advertised at as such. At that time we got a clear rejection from the App Store that they were no longer going to allow astrology apps. Fair enough, we pivoted the dating app to something else and it has been in the store doing fine for years now. But what we noticed was sometime around 2020, all of a sudden apple allowed a huge influx of new astrology apps into the store. It made no sense to us and seemed like bullshit, but what can you do?
Building web apps is far more enjoyable if only because you don't have to deal with the capricious nature of Apple's App Store review. It's non-deterministic CI at best.
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.
The concept of computers that for programs to run on them need to be submitted to a committee who decides if the users computer can run it or not felt like where the tides were going for a long time.
Post AI this starts to feel absurd and look if OpenAI release a hardware device with an App Store will the process be days to weeks of review or will it be vibe code it in 40 minutes hit publish and it’s available to every device in 2 minutes?
Yeah think software is thankfully going towards a world where bureaucracy isn’t respected.
The apple decides what the box or square in your hand can do era is over.
> It’s actually exquisitely well-designed and painstaking crafted. It’s exactly the sort of app that the App Store ought to celebrate and highlight.
Exactly what I thought at some point. Apple, or whoever they outsource their app store reviews to, certainly try hard to beat that kind of idealism out of people. I let my developer subscription run out and moved on to make web apps only. Never looked back.
Honestly, reading this, I kinda feel they have an AI integration in the review tool, which hallucinate and tell them it’s Astrology and employees at that level don’t want to go against that judgement
I've been waiting for several days on my MacOS app review. After many successful releases, somebody has decided to nitpick the App description. Fixed and resubmitted. Then, another rejection for some other related aspect of the description. Fixed and resubmitted, now waiting on next review.
I'm good to make the description complaint, of course, but it seems the reviewer immediately halts as soon as they encounter any issue. Would have been nice to get both feedback points on the first response, especially given how long it can take to get back to the top of the queue.
At the end of the day, I regret my choice to use the App Store at all.
The most evil (yes) thing about the rejection is that the same stupid wrong misinformation about the app continued to be rubber-stamped as it propagated forward in what should be increasing levels of actual scrutiny and attention. They are lying to call it a review - it's mindless rubber-stamping either by design or because Apple employs people who just can't be bothered to do their jobs.
> In a sworn deposition in the Epic lawsuit, Phillip Shoemaker, the former head of the App Review team, said employees in his department generally did not have a technical background in computer coding. They needed to know how to use a Mac and an iPhone, he said.
> “Qualifications were that they could breathe, they could think,” he said. And they typically worked at the Apple “Genius Bar” at the company’s retail stores. It typically took about 13 minutes to review a new app, Shoemaker said in the deposition.
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.
It took 90 days earlier this year for our venture-backed business to get approved by Apple merely for a corporate developer account, with all documentation available at the beginning of the process.
Perhaps try and not collide your app's exact name with a horror survival video game [2024: Steam, Xbox, Playstation] that involves a trickster demonic clown who tosses mysterious game-changing cards at you? I mean, I'm just guessing here. [Spoiler alert: I asked Gemini LLM to cut to the chase]
TRICKSTER
This entity is a demon-like clown that plays tricks on its victims. It is accompanied by Jack n Boxes that are triggered by cards he leaves around that offer good and bad results - the good result being the box that has a symbol that relates to the card you pick up. Instead of just killing you when he catches up, you have to go through what I call a "Just Dance" challenge. Hit the WASD, or whatever your keybinds are, when the indication reaches the box.
We ran into an interesting situation. After long hours we could not get the escape key in the egyptan level. We have a clown, where we have to follow the cards. We can obtain every fuse, we finsih with the objectives, but there are not any card left to find, and the exit key was not it the middle of the lasers ( a mystery card was there). And one additional info, we also could not found the key for administrator 1... any suggestion ?
This is just one property named "Dark Hours"; there are horror films and mystery novels, and while it's a cromulent name for astronomy, just looking at the name gave me feelings of spiritualism or prophecy, on top of those cool nights watching Perseids with Dad and sister, in the flat field.
Your website, darkhours dot io, is six days old. That is, it was created on August 1st, and it was not spotted by web.archive.org, until August 2, 2026. So your "Dark Hours" naming is really, really late to the game, so to speak. You should change your name before the game-makers of "Piece of Cake Studio" find you and send a cease and desist to change your domain name, before .io registrar revokes it, which appears to be in Colorado and/or the British Indian Ocean, for all intents and purposes.
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.
I'm not defending Apple at all (I'm a developer, I've not specifically worked on apps for iDevices, however I've worked closely with those that take our platforms and tie them into those apps at many companies and startups)
I've also not finished reading the article, however right away, based on what I've read, I see the problem. Apple reviews a thousands upon thousands of apps a day, and the folks reviewing those apps (and now, AI) aren't going to continue to review an app when they see a potential violation. It is up to the app developer to be clear and concise.
Apple is a pain to deal with, I get that. However, I see why it was rejected. Continuing to read the article now.
EDIT: read the rest of it. My take is that they are probably employing AI based upon the odd response (which is dumb, also note, Apple has been using forms of machine learning for years to assist with this stuff. When I say AI, I specifically refer to LLMs).
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. They take notes. Notes that aren't shared with you, just among folks that may review it again in the future. When it is re-reviewed, those notes are taken into consideration and given a ton of weight. That is why it is important to give a perfect presentation the first time around. If you have 30 seconds to re-review an app that was rejected and you have notes (and possibly a screenshot or two? I don't know if Apple does that part) of what was presented during the previous review, you aren't going to do a whole bunch of investigating if it looks like nothing has changed. You have deadlines that impact your performance review, you will move on and rubber stamp the re-review. The next level up will take slightly longer, etc.
App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
(daringfireball.net)318 points by _da_ 12 hours ago | 181 comments
Comments
> It has no tarot function, no horoscopes, and nothing that I, or anyone else I’ve asked, would associate with astrology.
I have dealt with the Byzantine App Store bureaucracy before. What you do here, is you submit a new version, pretty much identical to the previous one, with the comment “tarot function removed”.
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 because of an old video.
I recently signed up for a personal dev account for the play store and I have to get 12 friends with android devices to “test” it before they’ll consider my app at all…
That is to say I have to go online and horse trade with 12 people (hell if I know who these people are or what their unapproved apps do…) and get them to test mine if I test theirs. That alone is suspicious kinda behavior but google all but requires it now.
Meanwhile on my work account I’m publishing just fine.
Which makes this a good time to remind everyone about the Keep Android Open movement:
https://keepandroidopen.org/
> "Starting in 2027*, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID."
Developers are wondering if they are the only ones on their forums: https://developer.apple.com/forums/topics/app-store-distribu...
and i am surprised that apps like "Night Sky" (great app, no affiliation) made it past review if the app store reviewers are incapable of telling the difference.
https://darkhours.io/ does look really cool, i hope they get this sorted out.
There's a Wikipedia article with some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy
I 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 appeared later in the texts of Arabian writers.
I pointed out that there were a couple other E-rated apps that show the exact same image, and many more T-rated ones that only warn of "In-App Purchases" — no "Violence" label. One of the latter is the official Google TV app [0], so I sent some screenshots of that, and asked if maybe they were "crushing the competition" by avoiding their own review process, to see if that would escalate my case (no such luck).
[0] The image is still the same in the Google TV app, and Google Search surfaces the image in question S1 E10: https://www.google.com/search?q=landman+season+1
How many great apps are rejected, but build by people without reach?
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.
Post AI this starts to feel absurd and look if OpenAI release a hardware device with an App Store will the process be days to weeks of review or will it be vibe code it in 40 minutes hit publish and it’s available to every device in 2 minutes?
Yeah think software is thankfully going towards a world where bureaucracy isn’t respected.
The apple decides what the box or square in your hand can do era is over.
Exactly what I thought at some point. Apple, or whoever they outsource their app store reviews to, certainly try hard to beat that kind of idealism out of people. I let my developer subscription run out and moved on to make web apps only. Never looked back.
Then I read more and realized it was just stupidity.
I don’t understand why tarot reading apps are banned, can someone enlighten me?
I'm good to make the description complaint, of course, but it seems the reviewer immediately halts as soon as they encounter any issue. Would have been nice to get both feedback points on the first response, especially given how long it can take to get back to the top of the queue.
At the end of the day, I regret my choice to use the App Store at all.
Sad to say this, but this has been known since forever.
Apple is anti-dev, pro control of the income stream, and only interested in supporting devs that are all in on the cult.
The fact that the dev made a web version with all the same functionality just proves we don't need an app store nor Apple to gatekeep it.
Has Apple really sunk that low?
> In a sworn deposition in the Epic lawsuit, Phillip Shoemaker, the former head of the App Review team, said employees in his department generally did not have a technical background in computer coding. They needed to know how to use a Mac and an iPhone, he said.
> “Qualifications were that they could breathe, they could think,” he said. And they typically worked at the Apple “Genius Bar” at the company’s retail stores. It typically took about 13 minutes to review a new app, Shoemaker said in the deposition.
They are insanely, glacially slow.
They deny great apps, fail to fix their mistakes, and leave heaps and heaps of actively malicious apps in place, in the top 40 in every category.
And we pay them 10x cc processing fees (30% instead of 3%) for this.
It’s pure rentseeking bullshit, and it goes against everything that made Apple Apple. It’s an actual tragedy.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=33623...
https://www.darkhours-thegame.com/This is just one property named "Dark Hours"; there are horror films and mystery novels, and while it's a cromulent name for astronomy, just looking at the name gave me feelings of spiritualism or prophecy, on top of those cool nights watching Perseids with Dad and sister, in the flat field.
https://nic.io/whois-search.htm?domain_name=darkhours.io
Your website, darkhours dot io, is six days old. That is, it was created on August 1st, and it was not spotted by web.archive.org, until August 2, 2026. So your "Dark Hours" naming is really, really late to the game, so to speak. You should change your name before the game-makers of "Piece of Cake Studio" find you and send a cease and desist to change your domain name, before .io registrar revokes it, which appears to be in Colorado and/or the British Indian Ocean, for all intents and purposes.
I'm not defending Apple at all (I'm a developer, I've not specifically worked on apps for iDevices, however I've worked closely with those that take our platforms and tie them into those apps at many companies and startups)
I've also not finished reading the article, however right away, based on what I've read, I see the problem. Apple reviews a thousands upon thousands of apps a day, and the folks reviewing those apps (and now, AI) aren't going to continue to review an app when they see a potential violation. It is up to the app developer to be clear and concise.
Apple is a pain to deal with, I get that. However, I see why it was rejected. Continuing to read the article now.
EDIT: read the rest of it. My take is that they are probably employing AI based upon the odd response (which is dumb, also note, Apple has been using forms of machine learning for years to assist with this stuff. When I say AI, I specifically refer to LLMs).
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. They take notes. Notes that aren't shared with you, just among folks that may review it again in the future. When it is re-reviewed, those notes are taken into consideration and given a ton of weight. That is why it is important to give a perfect presentation the first time around. If you have 30 seconds to re-review an app that was rejected and you have notes (and possibly a screenshot or two? I don't know if Apple does that part) of what was presented during the previous review, you aren't going to do a whole bunch of investigating if it looks like nothing has changed. You have deadlines that impact your performance review, you will move on and rubber stamp the re-review. The next level up will take slightly longer, etc.