AI is turning Apple's app review process into a nightmare for synth developers
synthanatomy.com
synthanatomy.com
That app was still waiting for review over a week later. I filed two different expedite requests (despite getting a success screen both times, I never got an email from Apple, so I wasn’t sure if it went through) and I filed a developer support ticket. All of that resulted in absolutely nothing, and I’m still waiting now on the app to be reviewed over a week and a half later.
And that client? Yeah the app was for a Pizza Week event in their town, which is ending tomorrow, the app never launched. Thankfully I also had a mobile-friendly website but they are, obviously, not happy. Yes, a week was short notice and they should have reached out sooner to get the ball rolling but also I’m not at all accustomed to app review taking that long. A week was the worst I had seen in the last few months so 10 days of silence is a new record.
Expedited review is just a joke I guess.
Really begs the question of why this ever had to be an app in the first place. Even if we already have app platforms for events to use.
This could have been a single pdf download from the towns event page on a website.
I won't even install an app for a well known company, let alone some single event. The world has gone insane.
It’s obvious why, they get much more control over apps and they like that. They also get to siphon off more money this way through in-app purchases and subscriptions.
Many, maybe even most, apps don’t require very many native features. Even something like notifications can be done in a browser and they are on desktop. But they’re still turned into apps, because apps are easier to use. You get a nice icon you can click.
You also get this strange phenomenon where a lot of apps are literally just web views + maybe a couple native APIs for things like notifications. It’s a complete waste of time.
One solution would be a platform where users can share little apps with each other. One that provides a programming environment and useful APIs. But, this is strictly against App Store policy! Which is why it doesn’t exist. The closest thing is the browser, which is nerfed.
And the 12 beta-testers is rather knew and doesn't apply to older accounts.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
> Developers with personal accounts created after November 13, 2023, must run a closed test for their app with a minimum of 12 testers who have been opted in continuously for at least 14 days.
Most states offer an LLC for a few hundred $ and 1 day processing time.
You can then dissolve the LLC later if you no longer want it.
Yeah that is an easy option. In my jurisdiction that costs above 500€ for legal paperwork (notarized stuff) and now you have to submit double-entry bookeping records and tax forms every year. THAT is not an alternative to anything. Dissolving costs around 300€ just the notary appointment. Again, am in Europe.
The cost of the registered agent is usually the biggest cost (unless you can find someone who will do it for free).
Such a stupid discussion to have in the first place, suggesting forming a buisness entity to fast track your hobby app into the play store.
Doesn't apply to alllll apps - but flagging it in case you hadn't recently looked into it.. web apps can do a lot and don't charge 15%.
It's probably no coincidence that the only allowed browser engine on iOS doesn't provide proper PWA support.
I have encountered no issues (using IndexedDB for user data) so far. If you approach database sizes larger than 1GB I believe you might run into quotas.
I don't know if that's true though.
Oh the irony too...
Don't let Apple catch you doing that. Good way to get your account banhammered.
Currently suffering through rejections just to get a client’s app into the first rounder of testers’ hands.
I use TestFlight almost from the start of a project. Great way to involve non-tech folks, and work out UI design issues quickly.
Depends on the reason. "Bullshit" is in the eye of the beholder.
I don't think that they reject for branding issues, in the TestFlight review (like they do, for the App Store -I have had my app rejected, because it had the word "finder" in its name). For example, if you change the color of the Sign in with Apple button, it will get rejected (in the App Store review -I don't know if they would reject it in the TestFlight review).
They do, however, look for things like private API access, crashes, and dodgy behavior. Even if a code path is TODO, it shouldn't crash. I just fill those with NOP functions.
First rejection they ask me to take a video of the app working (and they explicitly ask for a real iPhone although I did it in the emulator and it passed). Isn't that the whole point of their review to do it themselves?
Then now they ask me for documented authorization of each radio listed in the app. I keep pointing that there is already apps with the same data source as mine (radio-browser) and they keep replying the same thing.
Each round takes days or a week.
I don't think humans were involved in any part of this process (except me). I guess I will have to fake it somehow.
I have a previous app approved and I must say the process was actually better than what I had anticipated back then.
Meanwhile on Android updates are just flying through.
Or is the “problem” in your case the non-tech part, so not knowing how to install xcode and the developer license? The xcode part Claude can automate (once you’ve downloaded it) I guess.
It's 100€/year for technically nothing
Imagine having to pay on windows or Mac to even run "hello world"
They came on disks and you did not get the disk unless you paid for it first.
You can argue the last 20 years of free tools is the anomaly
I wish it wasn't there but for $100 you can install custom software you want on the phone without all the annoyances.
Longer support and usefull life, better prices and widespread expertise to repair, cheaper accessories, etc
The point is value, is hard to justify "100 bucks" as an one time payment to run some code on your phone unless you are not iper committed
It's wild if you l
Now its $100, tomorrow you need to upload your passport, next month you have different limits and need to comply.
Im building personal apps and running on my own devices. Yeah you need a dev license, but that isn’t THAT huge of a barrier to entry.
Even a non tech person can have claude walk them through how to do it in an afternoon
And, most non-techies want to share what they've made. If if daughter vibe codes an app you can bet she wants to share it with her friends.
How so? On Android I can sideload apks I didn't make
In the short-term, I suppose that 24-hour period is *#@!§$%-annoying and a regression compared to the previous situation, but beyond that it's still way better than Apple where a) you have to install Xcode and build the app yourself, b) you can only install three apps concurrently and c) you need to reinstall them every seven days.
With Android, beyond that initial 24-hour waiting period, you don't need any external software, you can install an unlimited number of apps and once installed they stay installed forever.
A prison cell is way better than a sealed black box
I think none of this should be the case, and I'll switch to a custom OS on my next device if not this one, but I don't think it's worse than iOS?
A paid plan, with no review needed, will give you a year I believe before you have to reinstall. Only free accounts have the 7-day limit
> If if daughter vibe codes an app you can bet she wants to share it with her friends.
Testflight internal, no review. Or Testflight external, minor review (I've heard it's much faster/easier than normal app store review, I don't use it).
Mostly that it gets around any review issues (mostly, unless you use external Testflight).
Assuming you're referring to free, non-developer accounts, having to re-sign one's app is a really annoying inconvenience which should not exist.
I grow really tired of these excuses for the multi-trillion dollar company doing its best to make it difficult for users. "Just do this really annoying thing. What's the problem?"
Also as said in this thread, limit of 3 concurrent apps, have to reinstall every week, have to own a mac with xcode.
This is the World they themselves created by consistently supporting coeporate-controlled computing, in which they are just a guest on their own devices, so my sympathy is limited.
There have been plenty of warnings over the past 20 years that this scenario is unfolding, but people wilfully ignored that because "it just works" and "but what about my banking apps?!".
Maybe it's not appropriate to go Full Stallman on your colleagues, but have you challenged them to change their purchasing choices for the future?
I’d argue they need to consider a middle ground - maybe allowing the free developer account to share an app to a maximum number of people (10? 20?) and for a (much) longer period than a week.
It shouldn’t be any more difficult than sharing an artefact from Claude.
Reviews passing in a day, sometimes in a few hours.
Apple has anti-spam app policies that basically limit innovation and competition in certain product categories. An extreme example would be Apple not allowing any more "sleep music apps" b/c there is enough in the store.
An investor actually approached me about buying a couple mobile apps I made b/c they are "aged" and don't need to go through the rigorous first-review approval process
The developer has to produce documentation of what works etc before the Apple reviewers waste time on it. Given the load of AI slop they must be getting the limiting resource is the reviewer so cut down the work they have to do.
The app/game is already proven to work at the time it is compiled and again as it is uploaded and put through Apple’s first line of App Store checks.
Apple is already putting large demands on developers with enforced SDK changes and new devices, we need them to do more for us not less. Large companies might be able to eat the time required to do these videos, but as an indie developer it already takes hours or days to prepare the app store page. This is not good by any measure.
I'm not sure how platforms will handle this honestly. Of course they want to curate a bit and avoid blatant malware/spam, though.
They have some duty to the developers who paid them for distribution rights whether they're making AI slop, manual slop or something worthwhile, and their processes should scale appropriately.
They can absolutely afford to hire more.
They look at margins and they want to optimize them, not use better margins as a reason to pursue smaller margins. Small time indie developers and businesses that earn them less than millions a month in fees are not worth their time. They’re solving this by automating more telemetry, not by hiring more junior and senior reviewers. They don’t want to take a loss on small devs.
Only way they change course is via regulations.
Or that more reviewers might lead to more apps which lead to more revenue.
Most (by quantity) of the rest is apps that are free and don't make much money from IAP and just monetize with tons of ads. Apple doesn't get their beak wet on those so they know that even a few million more spent on reviewers wouldn't make a big difference in their own revenue.
The rest of us, we just have to wait our turn.
Trust me they know, that's why every single marketing page on the appstore (do not take my word for it, go check it) almost only talks about either education or productivity apps.
Hire more reviewers. Apple is making a shitload of money from App Store sales (and of course by scamming its users in many creative ways). They'd better spend it on making developers happier, not on thickening the walls of their garden.
Apple make a shitload of money from the app store in general, including app developer subscriptions.
The review process is already semi-automated, and hiring a few hundred human reviewers of all kinds would be a cash flow rounding error.
You're not sure what they can do?
1) hire more people 2) let people buy apps from wherever they want.
Only way to get what we want from Apple is regulation.
A lot, they _can_ do almost whatever they want with their own AppStore and own business model. Including making good on the anti-trust lawsuit they've got for a decade around the world and let go of their monopoly.
We shouldn't make it sound like they _have to be_ the bad guys. Even from a business standpoint they're slowly losing the grip on their market and getting back some goodwill wouldn't be a bad thing.
And people also need to stop thinking in general-purpose computer only to the OS layer. A Pixel is no good to me either for precisely the same reason: it is, based on its feature set, not an (ultramobile) general-purpose computer.
1. easy-access expandable storage (e. g. dedicated uSD card slot)
2. 1-2 high-speed full-feature USB port(s)
3. 3.5 mm audio jack
4. an ergonomic, i. e. flicker-free display
5. a user-exchangeable battery
6. Batteryless operation mode
Additional (personal) niceties:
1. Active stylus support (EMR preferred)
2. Pogo pins for attachable keyboard, etc.
In other words: Ultra-mobile GP computing (and not telephony) is the first customer.
Very perceptive! :)
As a matter of fact, Samsung out of all cases got pretty close with the Galaxy Note9 [1]. I don't know about the bootloader. Didn't care back then since I only used them on the job. The other major annoyance, apart from the non-removable battery, was its display from PWM hell, which made privately owning it already a dealbraker.
We used Note9s to great effect for crime scene documentation, sasec concept prep, local security camera maintenance/analysis, etc.; the combination of annotating floor plans and photos with precision as well as taking voice notes on the move was unmatched; nothing ever came close.
Samsung itself would have to make a follow-up to the XCover6Pro (not XCover7Pro) with S-Pen support, more RAM and storage, better CPU and cameras, and boatloader access for GOS support. Hell's frozen over twice before that'll ever happen; big money's only in further enshittification. Now just "AI"-labeled.
Hub (or dock) compatibility is also a necessity, but that's for locked-in-place or steadily-positioned operation, e. g. on the table, or from a car port.
And there is no legitimate reason for that omission, whatsoever.
Our computers are intentionally crippled so that we need to ask permission for what to do with them.
I was talking about the design aesthetics of a handheld general-purpose computing device, i. e. one that within its device-class is not overspecialized. That's largely hardware design, which obviously can't be altered as easily.
A compiler? As long as the machine let's me install all the software I need (later), and without any permission torture from "sideloading" hell, I'm good.
I mean you've got a chap in this very discussion for whom certain stock Android devices are enough cos he can run his compilers and Linux. But to me a Pixel, or any similar feature-downgraded device, is utterly undesireable; shipping one with a compiler out of the box is not even a consolation prize, lol.
There are no perfect platforms, there are only tradeoffs. The iOS tradeoff apparently is preferred by these developers.
Could be a bit of momentum. Androids audio stack started out with a completely incompetent latency of near 500ms pre Jellybean, was made a bit less terrible through the years [1], and only becoming acceptable in 2021 [2], still near 2x of iPhone from over a decade before.
Apps like garage band were so impressive because could not function on Android.
[1] https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later...
[2] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/an-update-...
It's a turtles-all-the-way-down situation. I've toured with musicians before, and they are not jamming on iPads or plugging their DAC into an iPhone. They're running full-fat computers, real Omnisphere presets and the total Melodyne suite, not the pedestrian trial versions that the App Store sells.
Why is that? Valve has sold plenty of games to Linux gamers and now has its Steam Machine, etc. So commercial software on open platforms is definitely viable.
Not sure if it’s because I have a good track record but I only had been rejected a couple of times and even then I just had to submit a screen recording of me playing with the app to make it pass the review process.
Normally in other fields of endeavor if we can differentiate between two ways a thing was made we are thus able to split individual things into two potential sets and place them accordingly. I realize that "developers" may wish to have the two categories commingled for their own purposes but I think they should just get over themselves and realize that you can't fight the natural human tendency to separate things into groups for identifying potential differences between them.
You can feel the entitlement across the room from the developer. They seem to be unable to conceive that outside of their bubble there can be a real case of AI spamming that same look and feel, even if they did it by heart.
Looking at his work, it's clearly modelled after Serum (which even the article describes as "a sort of Serum 2 for iOS") so I am not sure why they think this suddenly deserves a white glove service here.
The App Store is also flooded with Synth apps, so regardless of the UI being the trigger here, I would imagine the category itself has been flagged as spammy and now has a higher bar of entry.
If anything I would use this as an opportunity to reskin and try to stand out, they're giving you a blueprint of what will perform better on the algorithm if you avoid that look if you think about it.
Or just try an Alt Store.
At least on Android you can make them self updating and not care about rest of the ecosystem
technically, anyone can grab a copy of source, put their phone into developer mode and install the app too.
But- practically, it's hard.
You only get 4 application slots on devices in dev mode for example and I think they also expire.
I tried creating an internal app for my company and was gobsmacked that I didn't have any sane method to distribute it short of taking full ownership of everyones devices via MDM.
You are of course not allowed to publish "internal" apps to Testflight (or the App Store, but that's more obvious).
Second, to your point, say we trusted them, it's a chicken or the egg problem. After all the trash entered the space it became flagged and a scale/moderation issue.
The larger problem is the bad actors.
But simply because you're solving the same problem others are? No, that's horrible overreach. We have copyright and patent law to deal with outright copies. It's not Apple's place.
My above comment is not an excuse for design spam. The design spam rule is necessary. Your feedback is not.
Synths have never been a high profit business on iOS. And small earners are not a priority for Apple review. There’s a business case for not being bothered with most indie apps.
To suggest there’s categorically no room for innovation or value add with new synth products is just ignorant though.
It's like when the App Store started, someone made a Flashlight App and it was cool. We sure had enough of that by now. Now that AI turned everyone into a maker and the bar is lower in a world of abundance, it's only natural that things shift in terms of expectations for distribution.
This is how new markets take shape too, YouTube became so trash that now platforms such as Nebula came out as a business.
Is “we don’t think there’ll be a market for this” a defensible reason to disqualify an app from the App Store? What’s even your point? You are just looking to be argumentative and pretty clearly have no interest in actually discussing this.
So far in the U.S., that’s not an option. You likely already know this, which makes it a flippant argument.
Apple felt they were entitled to insert themselves as an all powerful gate keeper in program distribution, the least they could do is not be shit at it.
Musicians love to tweak their instruments - the rigid paths of purchased plugins and soft synths is pretty much over. There are so many wonderful, amazing things being done - by the hour, literally - that someone who has been in this world for a while might be wondering just what to do with themselves. By the time I've worked out the design/architecture for a new synth feature or concept, there are already 20 or 30 vibe-coded variants out there in different forms..
Like all good music-tech hackers I keep a lab/ folder with F/OSS projects, and as I review disk space on the regular I notice that my lab/FM-1/ folder grows day by day by day with absolutely astonishing bits of code, some 80+ projects in all (and by no means complete), a gource rendering of the repo collection reveals an extremely vibrant and flourishing scene. And as I do these code reviews (because who isn't doing code reviews these days), I am reminded of a very cold, hard, sharp and penetrating fact: its about the hardware.
The synth world is being completely refactored, as a marketplace and as a community, by the AI revolution. The only ones getting anywhere interesting with it, though, are the ones building the hardware ...
[1] MVAVE-FM1 is an extremely important lesson. It is, 101%, a F/OSS success story. It began life as a host for a very nice synth engine - is is now a host for the hottest synth engine of the next twenty minutes!! A relative outsider has done the impossible: make something great, ultra-cheap, relatively available .. and now AI has cracked it wide, wide open - just as it is doing with cracking open the very expensive nuts of very very, very expensive competing synthesizers. The $60 FM-1 is outshining a whole fleet of $600- and higher devices, and the custom firmware circuit is not going back in the bag.
The DSP guys have their hair on fire. So the race is on to create the next platform. While Apple are gate-keeping their garden, Akai, and Korg, and .. so, so many others .. are about to have their platforms become the hottest place for developers to do things, at another end of the scale.
Its a crazy year to be a digital musician. We literally don't need Apple any more.
Maybe the "democratization" of it will bring in fresh ideas. Maybe not. But anyway basically no one will make any money or have any success off these vibe coded apps.
But for billions of people it's still way too high of friction for now. Especially on mobile and iOS. So they download apps.
There's still success to be had too. Distribution is all that's ever really mattered. If you have money to advertise or authority in some niche... you can get users and customers, no matter the slop.
Most of the new people making apps will learn that the hard way like the rest of us, but some will succeed.
This is absurd.
If people want the editorialized 'safety' of an App Store, they can use it, that's fine, but there's no reason to stop people from buying apps for their phone from wherever they want.
> Every week, nearly 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 130K apps.
And they actually updated that in the middle of last year, it's not just something they forgot it used to say:
> Every week, over 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 100K apps.
The size of target demographics of music creation apps are basically zero. Even if the music created were to be sold on Apple Music to be played million times, that won't get reasoned and traced back to be attributed to these apps. These are likely a "waste of disk that nobody buys and won't lead to MAS user retention", in a narrow view concerning just the Mac App Store.
App Store review process was always known to be inconsistent, unfair, unpredictable, just wrong, a reviewer gacha gambling of its own, etc. etc., but, I mean, causes of rejections mentioned in the article sounds a bit bogus, like bad fault tree analysis.
It should be possible to build a review process based on AI that is both faster and more accurate than the 2020-era human-based review process. This isn't rocket science. Are they trying to cheap out by using bad AI models? Or is this some corporate policy where they can only use an "Apple model"? Or do they not have people who are good at developing AI-based workflows?
Hard to say from the outside, but this doesn't seem like some sort of inevitable thing, it just seems like Apple has built a bad process here.
But I remember when the app would wait over a week for review, so it's still better than Ye Days of Yore.
I'm almost positive that the reason is a tsunami of slopplets. I know a couple people, just in my orbit, that vibe-coded their first iOS apps. One is a seasoned engineer, and his app is pretty good. The other...not so much, but it did get approved (faster than my update).
I don't disagree with the critique of Apple's policies, but boy this made me roll my eyes.
Then all subsequent ones were rejected "Developer provided test account stopped working"
Logs show that the tester used the "delete my account" function..
As the only customer service available is an uncaring LLM, the only solution that worked was to keep the "Delete my account" button in the app, and make it a NOP on the server side.
One thing before you enter… Was it true that Treyvon Martin was safe at home and his girlfriend convinced him to go fight George Zimmerman? Explain how that changes the narrative you were told repeatedly.”
Fuck Apple. Open up iPhones.
Oh, so they are trying to do a soft bait and switch; where an app developer makes an app, splits its functionality, and sells both on the app store. They hope that someone buys the first app, which is missing basic functionality, not realizing they have to buy a second app to get the additional expected features. Like if you buy a video converter app that doesn't let you convert to an MP4 unless you buy a second "MP4 version" video converter app. Scummy behavior, glad Apple blocked it.
Some of them are good - generally by musicians or sound designers who couldn't code.
Many are utter trash, designed by developers who have barely any musical taste and simply told Claude to make some glitchy reverb pedal or groovebox. They use AI to write the copy for the app store and leave the UI as default (navy with fixed width headers, often looking like more like a spreadsheet than a synth). Sometimes trying to charge as much as $30 for it. It's a scourge but on the upside, most of them have now got their dopamine fix and moved onto something else.
Who has ever released an iOS app and has "former euphoria"? The process been utterly frustrating for many, many years at this point, and it is a running gag among iOS developers how stupid your rejections can get.
Yes, everything is getting hammered seemingly, took me a month to get new account verified on Steamworks, which used to take two weeks. Lots of places face longer review times, some places seem to double-down on automating as much as possible, without really having sufficient rigor for it in reality.
2007 — John Gruber, "WWDC 2007 Keynote News" This was his reaction to Jobs telling developers to build web apps instead of real ones. Its best-known line: "If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it."
2008 — Fraser Speirs, "App Store: I'm Out" The battle lines were drawn when an Apple representative reviewing submissions for the App Store rejected a program called Podcaster for duplicating iTunes. Speirs then vowed never to write another iPhone app for the store "as currently constituted." Runner-up: the anger over the SDK's secrecy agreement (NDA), which Apple dropped in October after admitting it placed "too much of a burden" on iPhone developers.
2009 — Paul Graham, "Apple's Mistake" Graham wrote that the App Store is an ongoing karma leak. Pair it with Joe Hewitt quitting the Facebook iPhone app the same month: "I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process."
2010 — Lee Brimelow (Adobe), "Apple Slaps Developers in the Face" This was about rule 3.3.1, which banned apps built with cross-platform tools like Flash. Brimelow ended it with: Go screw yourself Apple. (coverage)
2011 — Readability's open letter to Apple "We believe that your new policy smacks of greed," wrote Rich Ziade, Readability's creator. Apple reversed itself within days. (coverage)
2012 — Marco Arment, "The Mac App Store's future of irrelevance" His target was the new sandboxing rules: "leaving is often a better option, or the only option, for the affected developers". Runner-up: Wil Shipley's essay arguing the Mac App Store needs paid upgrades.
2013 — Ken Case (Omni Group) on OmniKeyMaster (the weakest year) Omni tried to offer discounted upgrades to Mac App Store buyers and had to back down: "My apologies: I'm afraid we will not be able to offer upgrade pricing to our Mac App Store customers after all." (coverage)
2014 — Jared Sinclair, "A Candid Look at Unread's First Year" His sales numbers set off the "indie apocalypse" debate. Runner-up: Apple ordered PCalc's calculator widget removed while featuring it. Apple then backed down possibly due in part to the firestorm of press and social media criticism.
2015 — Bohemian Coding, "Leaving the Mac App Store" (Sketch) Gruber's verdict on it: "The Mac App Store is rotting, at least for productivity software."
2016 — Bogdan Popescu, "Dash and Apple: My Side of the Story" Apple shut his developer account. He published a recorded call in which they want me to write a blog post in order to restore my account. One caveat for your article: Apple said the account was linked to almost a thousand fraudulent reviews.
2017 — Matt Gemmell, "Damage" His thesis: "No company has done as much damage to the perceived value of software, and the sustainability of being an independent developer, as Apple."
2018 — The Developers Union open letter It asked Apple for free trials for apps and a "more reasonable revenue cut." (coverage)
2019 — Daniel Ek, "Time to Play Fair" (Spotify) Spotify's CEO compared Apple's rules to inviting you to a match on our ping-pong table and then forcing you to play blindfolded while we change the rules throughout the game.
2020 — DHH's Twitter thread about the Hey email app (archived on hey.com) "I will burn this house down myself, before I let gangsters like that spin it for spoils." Probably the most famous thread in this whole history.
2021 — Kosta Eleftheriou's thread on scam apps It opened with "The App Store has a big problem": copycat scam apps were outselling honest developers while Apple took its cut. (coverage)
2022 — Judgment call The most-seen post was Elon Musk's "Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?" (it got quickly tagged by Community Notes). For a working developer's complaint, use Alin Panaitiu's post about being rejected for being "too similar to a website".
2023 — Eric Migicovsky and Beeper Mini Beeper Mini brought iMessage to Android, and Apple kept blocking it. By late December Beeper gave up, with Canadian CEO Eric Migicovsky writing in a blog post that Beeper "can't win" against Apple.
2024 — Tim Sweeney's thread on the EU rules Apple's response to the EU's Digital Markets Act was, he wrote, "a devious new instance of Malicious Compliance", with plenty more "hot garbage" in it. (coverage)
2025 — David Smith, "The Forgotten Customer" "They aren't trying to win me over by being excellent; they are assuming my loyalty through strong-arm tactics and intransigence." Runner-up: the backlash to Apple's Liquid Glass redesign, as in this line collected by Michael Tsai: "Liquid Glass has killed my motivation and desire to develop anything for Apple platforms."
2026 (so far) — Marco Arment on App Review delays "App Store review delays are back to Shoemaker-era levels." Many blame a flood of AI-generated apps. That makes a neat bookend to 2008, which was also about waiting on App Review. (Mastodon) Runner-up: Jeff Johnson's "Small ways the App Store could be improved for developers".