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Comment by Aulig | Hacker News Reader

The guideline to be able to access apps without an account still exists, but the enforcing might have become lighter - or it's just the random fluctuations in review qualities we all know by now :)

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Both of them still exists, but of course in some situations it doesn't make sense, so there is a lot of leeway depending on the reviewers. My experience is positive here, I can't remember the last time an app did not allow me to not have an account or manually provide data when it made sense.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#dat...

  (iv) Access [...] Where possible, provide alternative solutions for users who don’t grant consent. For example, if a user declines to share Location, offer the ability to manually enter an address.  
  
  (v) Account Sign-In: If your app doesn’t include significant account-based features, let people use it without a login [...]

Thanks for doing the work by digging up and linking to the actual guidelines! That's pretty close to how the wording was all those years ago. Like all things AppStore, the enforcement is what ends up being uneven and subject to Apple's discretion and judgment. Which is a good thing IMO. Without publisher discretion, you just get scummy developers who rules-lawyer their way onto the app store.

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