Just to add some balance to the conversation; this silliness isn't limited to Apple; we've had Play Store reject our app several times for doing something it literally doesn't do; they required us to add a data-protection policy to explain why we did it, and wouldn't accept that it (our app) literally doesn't (the app connects to a self-hosted server the user runs themselves, so it can easily be checked). In the end, we gave up and just added the DPP text anyway and it got approved.
Edit to add: This was for an update, over half a decade after release, not the initial release, and nothing had changed in how it functioned in this regard in that time.
In this case, they were correct to request that you add data protection policy. Your app may still process personal data locally and then you're still subject to data protection regulations.
You're going to have to cite a data protection authority case for me to believe that.
Edit: no, the more I think about it the more this interpretation is completely nuts. It implies that every single software vendor needs to secure consent from every single end user of software they ship through any client.
e.g. if SAP provide CRM software to Contoso, and Jim is a customer of Contoso, even though all the data is processed on Contoso premises, SAP still need to be in communication with Jim?
You would think for a 30% cut of all your [insert eStore name]-related business, it would include at least basic developer support explaining their decisions.
Product opportunity: Apple Store platinum plan for just 60% of your revenue. State of the art AI account managers will be happy to answer all of your questions.
Google and Apple should not control what happens on mobile. They're too big and they've monopolized computing as a platform.
Why do these companies get to say what you do with your camera, how you order food, or who you date? Their App Store dictatorship lets them control all of this.
The DOJ needs to mandate web installs for both platforms. Sandboxing, permissions dialogues, behavioural heuristics, and signature detection are all we need to keep us safe. The App Store concept is just a grift to earn Apple and Google margin on all transactions.
>Why do these companies get to say what you do with your camera, how you order food, or who you date? Their App Store dictatorship lets them control all of this.
Can you share some examples of when this happened to you?
Here to see all the creative justifications for why Apple is correct, and it's actually the app developer's fault for not clearly stating why an app that users explicitly downloaded to take photos takes photos. It's for the users' own protection of course.
Even after all these years the reality distortion field is strong as ever. Meanwhile if Google had done this people would already be outside their HQ with pitchforks and calling for the government to break up their evil monopoly.
This is a strange narrative to me. Google and other companies have done crappy things without people calling for a break up of the company. It’s possible you are in your reality distortion field. An anti-Apple one.
I don’t know anything about this particular case but there is a gray area when it comes to what an owner of a platform should/shouldn’t be allowed to do. I hope the EU cracks down hard on both Apple and Google. Both of these platforms have become essential to modern life in many ways and as such a case can be made for strict government oversight of them.
Nobody seems to be suggesting it is any better when Google does it; but on Android (if you ignore the efforts that Google has gone to to make the experience be limited) one can at least avoid the AppStore altogether, while still installing and running various things on device.
> This is a strange narrative to me. Google and other companies have done crappy things without people calling for a break up of the company.
Just a minor nitpick/correction here but there are multiple ongoing anti-trust suits that Google is getting killed on that very likely will lead to the breakup of some of its company's products, so that may be where the comment you are replying to is coming from.
I think Apple rightly gets the most criticism since their marketing is among mind-control levels and they are fine with doing unethical things (Lying in ads, using fake customers to pretend to have popularity, astroturfing/upvote farms to control narratives, making people status insecure)
Once you realize how dirty Apple's marketing is, its quite off-putting. I have a similar aversion to Samsung, Nintendo, Disney.
Maybe Google does mind control, but I didn't catch them. Apple, Samsung, Nintendo, Disney, these companies have no qualms making you feel pain to get a sale.
Nope, not seeing anyone defending Apple on this (at least in the top hundred or so comments at time of writing). Even if you can find one, the posts ITT remarking on how common ridiculous Apple defenses are likely outnumber the actual comments defensive of Apple. Y’all may want to adjust your priors.
I agree Apple is a monopoly and their software grip should be loosened. However, in this particular case, I think Apple is correct.
The intended functionality of the App, no matter how obvious it may seem, needs to be documented to users IMO. Yes it's a camera app - yes it takes pictures. However, users should understand WHEN and under what conditions the app takes pictures.
Saying "this app takes photos" is really not enough. Does it take photos while I sleep?
That might sound ridiculous but remember the plethora of apps that take location data when they don't explicitly need it at that moment.
I’m coming fresh off weeks of app rejections that turned out to be I included the word “review” in the description of my app on the Google Play Store, and best I can tell was an automated rejection based on keyword matching and entirely unhelpful to explanatory text, so let us not pretend Google is running a tighter ship here.
I suspect this is in no small part because many people here’s livelihoods are dependent or intertwined with said Corps, whether directly or indirectly. It’s very difficult to separate that innate bias.
I don’t agree with the gp comment’s sentiment though, plenty of people here and elsewhere go hard to bat for google, although admittedly lately that’s increasingly difficult to do with a straight face.
Here’s my creative justification: there’s a policy that works for 99% of apps, and in this case requires Halide to fill two sentences of text in to comply with. The alternative would be more mad.
With however many hundreds of thousands (or millions?) of apps in the store, the reason for why is quite obvious. Apple doesn’t need to have AI models that try to figure out what permissions an app would need. Nor do they need to hire people to do that manually.
Instead, they can make app developers fulfill whatever criteria they want. It’s their platform after all.
This is just some dumb random app reviewer as the creator of Halide said themselves.
It’s like going to the DMV, the type of people who work at those human facing administrative jobs often don’t care about doing their job well, they just blindly check boxes and exploit their small of amount of power to avoid any personal responsibility.
I'm the Halide cofounder who shared the silly rejection that blew up. I'm knee deep in our iPhone 16 update and tired, so I don't feel like engaging the discourse that comes up over and over around the App Store. Instead I'll just paste the follow-up I just posted to Reddit:
Hey everyone. Apple followed up with us to confirm this was a reviewer goof. Normally, they don't sweat that description when it's obvious it's a camera app. They're stricter on apps that don't really need camera access. This was human error, there's no need for us to change the description, so we're all good.
I once had a very frustrating battle with a new reviewer who told me my utilitarian app did not offer an "innovative experience" and wasn't "interactive" enough.
So I had to add a completely useless feature where a user could partition their database by marking some items as "favorites" and have a separate "favorite" view.
This was then approved, with the assertion that "it's now the magical kind of experience users expect from the App Store."
I'm pretty invested in an Apple ecosystem for some very specific software, but that was nearly enough to make me ragequit (unfortunately, the specific software is not something I could develop/imitate under Linux without a huge financial investment).
The most bizarre App Store rejection I’ve seen was for a TV app which was rejected by Play for ‘Policy Violation’ without much explanation… After several rounds of resubmissions and emails it turned out the problem was some channels on it were in 4:3 (not widescreen). Google required we add a ‘warning’ to the App Store description that it contains 4:3 content!
Remember when MS was sued by the DoJ for bundling IE? And they didn't even block Netscape or put onerous requirements on third party software developers? What a different time.
It's a comment on their monopoly position and how they can make it difficult at any point for a third party to run their business/app. Apple doesn't need to jump through these hurdles, but they can be placed in front of anyone else randomly, disrupting their business and income and at the very least, creating a worse user experience for those apps.
The article states that the alert had to be changed from:
"The camera will be used to take photographs"
to
"The camera will be used to take photographs for the app that you just downloaded to take photographs for."
"Spotify, why would you like to play audio? Please notify the users that you are using the speakers to play the audio for the app they just downloaded to play audio."
If they make using third party apps a little more scary, a little more dense, consistently, people will slowly gravitate to Apple's first party apps. You can see a similar pattern for MacOS where more and more restrictions are added to opening apps downloaded from outside the App Store.
Maybe for Apple - but there's crap running on my lineage phone I've not had the courage to look up. I just generally hope the firewall is working and only the apps I actually want to connect to the internet are able to do so.
And I suppose CPA exists to help understand tax laws, and there is always a possibility to sue the government if you don't agree with them on how the law works.
Whereas with app store reviews, it's a black box with no option other than trial and error to figure out what to do.
That is a terrible reason to request camera access. It is just restating the access request and it should be rejected. Why will photographs be taken? Because it is a camera/photography application and will only take photographs on explicit user request.
But as you just downloaded a camera app that you want to use to take pictures, that description is actually already beyond what could reasonably be expected.
In my job capacity, I give status updates about many unrelated projects.
If I am not explaining full context in a seemingly simple update or question, I will get my hand slapped. And if I tell my boss to “read” it’s going to go worse.
I would have removed the risk of removal by simply prefacing the app is a professional camera app and taking photos is the primary user function.
And not just a lesson for here but also in life: One-liners are fun to say, but people generally don’t like being on the receiving end of them.
Welcome to Halide. This is Halide. Halide needs camera access to take photographs. You can take photos of anything. Anything at all. The only limit is yourself. Anything is possible in Halide. You can do anything with Halide. The infinite is possible in Halide. The unattainable is unknown in Halide. Welcome.
I use it for lots of things that aren’t photography, scanning QR codes, AR uses like seeing how a piece of furniture will look in my house, identifying stars.
Readit News
Edit to add: This was for an update, over half a decade after release, not the initial release, and nothing had changed in how it functioned in this regard in that time.
Edit 2: Typo + clarification
Edit: no, the more I think about it the more this interpretation is completely nuts. It implies that every single software vendor needs to secure consent from every single end user of software they ship through any client.
e.g. if SAP provide CRM software to Contoso, and Jim is a customer of Contoso, even though all the data is processed on Contoso premises, SAP still need to be in communication with Jim?
Why do these companies get to say what you do with your camera, how you order food, or who you date? Their App Store dictatorship lets them control all of this.
The DOJ needs to mandate web installs for both platforms. Sandboxing, permissions dialogues, behavioural heuristics, and signature detection are all we need to keep us safe. The App Store concept is just a grift to earn Apple and Google margin on all transactions.
Apple might lose its monopoly, at least if other legislations follow the EU.
Can you share some examples of when this happened to you?
All of my apps don't get 'upgraded' with new microtransactions, no SEO spam, and the apps do the job.
Even after all these years the reality distortion field is strong as ever. Meanwhile if Google had done this people would already be outside their HQ with pitchforks and calling for the government to break up their evil monopoly.
I don’t know anything about this particular case but there is a gray area when it comes to what an owner of a platform should/shouldn’t be allowed to do. I hope the EU cracks down hard on both Apple and Google. Both of these platforms have become essential to modern life in many ways and as such a case can be made for strict government oversight of them.
Just a minor nitpick/correction here but there are multiple ongoing anti-trust suits that Google is getting killed on that very likely will lead to the breakup of some of its company's products, so that may be where the comment you are replying to is coming from.
Once you realize how dirty Apple's marketing is, its quite off-putting. I have a similar aversion to Samsung, Nintendo, Disney.
Maybe Google does mind control, but I didn't catch them. Apple, Samsung, Nintendo, Disney, these companies have no qualms making you feel pain to get a sale.
Nope, not seeing anyone defending Apple on this (at least in the top hundred or so comments at time of writing). Even if you can find one, the posts ITT remarking on how common ridiculous Apple defenses are likely outnumber the actual comments defensive of Apple. Y’all may want to adjust your priors.
The intended functionality of the App, no matter how obvious it may seem, needs to be documented to users IMO. Yes it's a camera app - yes it takes pictures. However, users should understand WHEN and under what conditions the app takes pictures.
Saying "this app takes photos" is really not enough. Does it take photos while I sleep?
That might sound ridiculous but remember the plethora of apps that take location data when they don't explicitly need it at that moment.
I’m coming fresh off weeks of app rejections that turned out to be I included the word “review” in the description of my app on the Google Play Store, and best I can tell was an automated rejection based on keyword matching and entirely unhelpful to explanatory text, so let us not pretend Google is running a tighter ship here.
I don’t agree with the gp comment’s sentiment though, plenty of people here and elsewhere go hard to bat for google, although admittedly lately that’s increasingly difficult to do with a straight face.
My laptop computer has that ability built in, and it isn't really "mad"
Instead, they can make app developers fulfill whatever criteria they want. It’s their platform after all.
It’s like going to the DMV, the type of people who work at those human facing administrative jobs often don’t care about doing their job well, they just blindly check boxes and exploit their small of amount of power to avoid any personal responsibility.
You guys are overthinking this
Hey everyone. Apple followed up with us to confirm this was a reviewer goof. Normally, they don't sweat that description when it's obvious it's a camera app. They're stricter on apps that don't really need camera access. This was human error, there's no need for us to change the description, so we're all good.
So I had to add a completely useless feature where a user could partition their database by marking some items as "favorites" and have a separate "favorite" view.
This was then approved, with the assertion that "it's now the magical kind of experience users expect from the App Store."
I'm pretty invested in an Apple ecosystem for some very specific software, but that was nearly enough to make me ragequit (unfortunately, the specific software is not something I could develop/imitate under Linux without a huge financial investment).
1. What is your definition of 'professional tools'?
2. What does Apple need to do to make Macs 'real' professional tools?
*Not Safe For Widescreen
The article states that the alert had to be changed from:
"The camera will be used to take photographs"
to
"The camera will be used to take photographs for the app that you just downloaded to take photographs for."
"Spotify, why would you like to play audio? Please notify the users that you are using the speakers to play the audio for the app they just downloaded to play audio."
If they make using third party apps a little more scary, a little more dense, consistently, people will slowly gravitate to Apple's first party apps. You can see a similar pattern for MacOS where more and more restrictions are added to opening apps downloaded from outside the App Store.
Developing for the App Store is about as much fun as filling out tax forms and talking to an IRS agent.
Whereas with app store reviews, it's a black box with no option other than trial and error to figure out what to do.
That is a terrible reason to request camera access. It is just restating the access request and it should be rejected. Why will photographs be taken? Because it is a camera/photography application and will only take photographs on explicit user request.
But as you just downloaded a camera app that you want to use to take pictures, that description is actually already beyond what could reasonably be expected.
E.g “The camera will be used to continuously take photographs and upload them to our AI platform for training, analysis, and aesthetic optimization.”
In my job capacity, I give status updates about many unrelated projects.
If I am not explaining full context in a seemingly simple update or question, I will get my hand slapped. And if I tell my boss to “read” it’s going to go worse.
I would have removed the risk of removal by simply prefacing the app is a professional camera app and taking photos is the primary user function.
And not just a lesson for here but also in life: One-liners are fun to say, but people generally don’t like being on the receiving end of them.
Oh come off it. It's used to take photographs because it's a photography application. How much handholding do we need?
"This is an alternate camera app. To take photographs, it needs access to the camera hardware."
Isn’t that a philosophical question? Do we now need to get philosophical to go through App Store reviews?
Photography is literally the only thing camera is good for and it's used for that purpose 100% of the time.
They can just write that the reason is that Halide is a photo app and be back on the store with no need for hand wringing.
I just wish Apple was as good as this at vetting all apps. There is always some junk on the store.