Tim Daley let us know via Twitter that his app, What Would Chuck Do?, was rejected by Apple’s iTunes App Store for the most terrifying reason imaginable. Because they said so:
Thank you for submitting WWCD – What Would Chuck Do to the App Store. We’ve reviewed the Application and, consistent with the criteria considered in our approval process, we have chosen not to publish this application. As you know, Apple reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to reject an application for any reason.
Regards,
iPhone Developer Program
While as a publisher, this is absolutely within Apple’s rights, as a platform that needs to nurture and maintain the support of both its developer and user base, it’s suicidal. And what’s worse, it’s stupid. In this day and age, especially for a company as connected as Apple, poor communication causing bad PR is as astounding as it is inexcusable.
Steve Jobs and Eddy Cue need to pull out whatever flame-thrower they marched the halls of MobileMe with last year and turn them full-throttle on whatever passes for the current App Store rejection policy. If any reviewer even thinks of typing “because we said so” they should immediately be transfered to whatever passes at Apple for Siberia.
It’s getting tiring to keep typing this, but developers deserve clear, consistent guidelines, users deserve top notch reviewers to make sure we get the best technical quality in apps, and Apple deserves a happy developers and PR experience that matches the phenomenal success of the App Store.
It’s such an easy thing to fix, which makes it all the more stupefying Apple not only hasn’t fixed it, but hasn’t even reached out to developers to show they understand the frustration level and are working to fix it.
For more examples, see TUAW’s recent reports from Christina Warren on MiniPops and Erica Sadu on iLaugh Lite.
Stupefying.
