This comment is far more true than people realize. And the worst part is, it's not an exaggeration in the slightest.

> You cannot point to the acceptance of one app as evidence that some rule isn't being applied to another app.

This is something they won't even discuss if you question how other apps can have some feature they may not like. You could have the same exact feature, and you'll get rejected.

Yeah, but when you don't think you're actually breaking the rules, "you never did anything about that guy" is good support.

This is not a case of somebody breaking the rules and trying to say that the rules do not apply. This is a case of the rules suddenly being reinterpreted to mean something completely different from what they used to mean.

Imagine if you stepped on a worm and then got arrested for murder. Would it not be a reasonable thing to say, "uh, there's another guy stepping on worms right over there and you're not arresting him, so what gives?"

"Yeah, but when you don't think you're actually breaking the rules, "you never did anything about that guy" is good support."

No, it isn't. The other guy is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is, YOU broke the rules.

Every app literally breaks the rules. I do not know of one that doesn't.

Every app violates the word of at least one of those rules. So the only thing you can do is interpret it the best way you can, and that interpretation is guided by what you see being approved.

Isn't that kind of the point. I had 4 apps with Pebble support (and noted in the description) approved in the last week, along with countless others as mentioned. This is more likely to be the bad/unlucky review than all the others.

While it is another example of a bad review, it's not necessarily an example of a ridiculous new practice by Apple. Maybe it is maybe it isn't, but 1 app is far from proof.

You're right, but this is more or less what I was trying to address with the last part of my comment.

Yes, this is far from proof. But Apple has done stuff like this constantly since the iPhone SDK was first released. At some point, it becomes reasonable to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that there's a good chance something bad is going on, just like the last thousand times.

If they roll it back, great! I imagine being called to task for a stupid decision will help make that happen.

Do we know how the app approval process works internally?

I've never been involved with iOS, but from the various articles I've read, it sounds like there is a large team involved with approvals, their process is largely manual, their internal documentation is lacking, and they're probably missing simple things like checklists.

I suspect there are vague instructions preferred over hard-and-fast guidelines that can be leaked to the press and quoted in hearings.

For an example of something similar: when one of these rejection snafus ends up making a public spectacle to the point where Apple wants to work directly with the app developer, they will do so exclusively over the phone rather than in a more sane fashion like e-mail, so that the details can't be so easily recorded and spread around.

> By that logic" doesn't belong anywhere near a discussion of Apple review guidelines or behavior.

Just like every other rule/law in the world.

It does belong because the claim is that Apple is actively denying apps that support Pebble (which is not true). If Apple were doing that, they'd have taken down the official Pebble app entirely. You're muddying the entire discussion bringing in the consistency of Apple's enforcement of rules or how fair the rules are. None of that matters in this discussion.

What matters is that some dev made a wild claim that Apple is actively denying Pebble apps for being Pebble apps, when in fact they just failed to follow the rules. That's all there is to this. That this story is as popular as it is is ridiculous. The headline is clickbaity as hell and just outright false.

The whole point of my post is that if Apple were actively denying apps that support Pebble they would not necessarily have taken down the official Pebble app, because that sort of inconsistency is exactly how they operate.

They can and do say "All apps that do X are forbidden" while not taking down some apps that clearly do X.

I wouldn't expect anything except inconsistency.

Apple does not move quickly, or consistently, or sanely. The continued presence of the official Pebble app on the store is completely consistent with a new Apple policy of prohibiting apps that talk about Pebble. Apple often starts by simply rejecting updates, and the Pebble app hasn't been updated since February. When Apple does start going after existing app versions, it often takes weeks or months. For example, there were several stories from the past fall about apps that came up with novel uses for the new Today screen in iOS 8, submitted, got accepted, were in the store for a month or two, then were suddenly given the choice of removing the feature or being yanked because it turns out that they were going against the arbitrary rules about what you're allowed to do in a Today widget.

Given that the issues with Pebble-related apps cropped up when trying to publish app updates, it's possible that Pebble itself just hasn't pushed an update yet, and thus hasn't hit this obstacle yet.