What could be worse than hitting the golden hour of submitting your long-awaited iOS app to the App Store, only to receive a rejection letter afterwards? Not just morally: Rejecting an app is a huge waste of time. It can take up to two to three weeks while your app is under Apple QA. And if it gets rejected, you get the answer and have to appeal to Apple’s Review Board or make corrections (which takes time) and resubmit the app anyway (which takes more time).
So it’s under the same review process. If everything goes well a second time, the app is approved and placed on the App Store. But what a waste of time that can be. Such a situation may be completely at odds with your marketing/business plans.
We all know that Apple QA usually rules out poorly made, crashing, buggy apps, apps with nudity and violence in the content. But there are several much less obvious reasons that caused rejections. You can find some subtleties that you don’t know about even within a reason that is usually obvious. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Copying of Apple Applications and Misuse of Trademarks
Apple generally doesn’t like imitations or misspellings, especially when it comes to its own products and services. You cannot have an iPhone image within your iPhone app. Apple rejects misspellings like “iPhone” or “iTunz” placed in third-party app names. They reject apps that are “confusingly similar” to existing Apple apps, either due to functionality or mimicked user interface. It’s worth adding that they never allow referencing to rival platforms.
2. Ad satiety
Apple will question the value and reject your app if it is efficiently designed to display ads and if it artificially increases the number of ad impressions or clicks. Empty iAd banners are also not welcome.
3. Sending messages with standard switches
You cannot change the functions of the standard switches (ie volume up/down and ring/mute). Not that this idea is popular, but the fact is quite interesting.
4. Device compatibility issues
iPhone apps should run unmodified on iPad and different iPhone resolutions. iPhone 6 will likely get the resolution doubled (1280?2272), so it will take some time to readjust the apps. But luckily, Apple always tries to make those transitions easy for developers. So if you’re building an app just for the iPhone 5S resolution, make sure it’s compatible with the smaller iPad and iPhone 4S, not redesigned specifically for them of course.
5. Misplacement of prices
Keep your descriptions and images clear. Not just for mentioning rival mobile platforms, but also for the amounts of pricing. It is prohibited by Apple; and the price you will set in your text description in one currency will be completely irrelevant to your users in other countries.
6. Misused in-app purchases
Apple is very strict with the In-App Purchase mechanism. You may not configure your app to unlock additional features and content using mechanisms other than the App Store. You may not sell features and digital content in any way other than IAP; for example, external links to websites for that purpose are not permitted. Vice versa, you cannot sell physical goods and services through in-app purchases. And no one can use them to ‘buy’ access to the built-in capabilities of iOS; there is a separate guide about it.
It’s worth nothing for Apple to reject apps that use IAP to sell expiring credits or other currencies; and all of those credits must be consumed within the app.
6. Defaming famous people
Apple will reject apps and games that ‘malign’ famous people: in a nutshell. Therefore, making a ‘political’ application may result in a rejection letter. The decision on the exact level of ‘mocking’ and ‘cartooning’ allowed is up to Apple.
7. Excessive violence and discrimination
Apple rejects any app that depicts excessive and realistic violence, Russian roulette, child abuse in the blink of an eye, especially if it considers that they encourage violence. Also, they don’t allow the “enemies” in the game to be solely from a specific race, culture, government, or other real entities, which can be much less obvious. Apple prohibits any sign of rudeness regarding religion, culture, and ethnicity.
8. Risks of damage or injury
Regarding harm, Apple rejects applications if their use could cause physical harm to a person or damage to the Apple device. As for devices, Apple bans apps that drain the battery in a whisper and cause the device to generate excessive heat.
Fortunately, Apple has fairly short and precise guidelines on what they can reject. Unfortunately, Apple rejects apps that it “thinks are over the line” and draws its own lines. But safety from this issue is in the hands of your development team, who are more likely to be in charge of deploying your app to the Store. The same team that will notify you in advance of possible complications, so that you can prevent the problem and launch your app on time.
