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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

> Removing text seems like an incredibly minor change request.

Can you expand on this? I'm not exactly sure what you mean. To clarify, I had 2 issues:

* App review thought part of my app should not be being a login screen, the data on this screen was fetched via our API was was authenticated (not a super easy change to expose that and we don't expose it to unauthed clients on purpose.

* Our app asked the user if they wanted to allow location access to see nearby stores on our map page (only asked when they went to the map page). We didn't pop the system dialog unless they agreed first to our own permission prompt (since you can only pop the system dialog once). This is against the rules now, which is fine, my frustration stems from continuing to see this practice everywhere.

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> This is against the rules now, which is fine, my frustration stems from continuing to see this practice everywhere.

This kind of sounds like being mad that the cop pulled you over for speeding, despite everyone else also speeding. I know it sucks and it feels like you're being singled out, but generally "everyone else is breaking the rule, too" has never been convincing to rule enforcers.

I worked at a company that always tried to walk the line right up to the edge of Apple's rules, and unsurprisingly kept running into trouble with app reviews. The company kept wanting to dig in and fight because "our_competitor does the same thing". My advice was always that it's pointless, and we'd be better off just concentrating on our app and fixing it.

At this point in my career, I almost feel like I could make money simply being an "AppStore Rules Consultant" who flies into a company, says "Just Do What Apple Said In Their Message!" and take home my fee.

> This kind of sounds like being mad that the cop pulled you over for speeding, despite everyone else also speeding.

It's a little closer to being pulled over in a Honda Accord with 200K+ miles on it going 71 in a 70 zone while Tesla's and BMW's fly by at 90+. Also those Tesla/BMW owners have had hundreds of tickets but somehow keep their licenses.

Yes, I know this is actually probably completely/near accurate to the real world, money runs everything, but it doesn't mean I have to be ok with it. I'm not advocating I should be allowed to "speed", just that it's frustrating to be the only one getting pulled over with (ok, I've stretched this metaphor as far as I can stand) a tiny dev team while billion/trillion dollar companies, for which my entire team is less than a rounding error, get away with murder.

The problem is that the rules are enforced differently based on the reviewer you get, and how s/he feels that day. This is blatantly obvious after time dealt with reviewers for more than 3 submissions.

So that cop who pulled you over? Did he have a bad day with his wife that morning? You’re getting a ticket. Tomorrow? Possibly not.

> This kind of sounds like being mad that the cop pulled you over for speeding, despite everyone else also speeding. I know it sucks and it feels like you're being singled out

It's different when every single app gets a review and these behaviors can be controlled at a bottleneck.

Your analogy is more apt if Apple decided they would only display websites that did X. And websites might pretend to do X for a little while, and then quit. And there's billions of them, not enough enforcers, and no simple bottleneck where they pass/fail BEFORE being released.

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