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joeboy_uk
Inspiring
July 12, 2018
Question

Apple wanting me to consolidate ALL apps

  • July 12, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 1839 views

I'm having really issues with 4.3 Design and spam. I've got all sorts of different apps in my account, education, business, trivia. Apps that only make sense on their own. Apple rejected my latest app and the comment was as follows:

"We ask that you consolidate your existing apps, as well as any new apps that you submit, as your app provides the same feature set as other apps you've submitted to the App Store, only varying slightly in content or language. (For those instances where it doesn’t seem appropriate to consolidate all of your apps into one, it would also be acceptable to consolidate your apps by theme, category of app, business, etc.)"

They are saying here I should put ALL business apps together under one app for example. Madness - so two completely different apps doing totally different things should be made into one app because they are both a business app?

Anyone else struggling with this?

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3 replies

MJD1981
MJD1981
Inspiring
July 18, 2018

I am also going through this with Apple, as they have ignorantly assumed that all of my apps are so similar that they could be "consolidated" (couldn't if my life depended on it... which it kinda does!).

The frustrating thing is I've yet to have anything close to an intelligent conversation in the "Resolution Center", where I'm only ever met with copy & paste robotic nonsense. They've yet to even name another app that is allegedly similar.

Is it possible that this is yet another attempt to discourage AIR apps? I heard they are automatically checking the "codebase" and making assumptions from there.

Frédéric C.
Frédéric C.
Inspiring
July 18, 2018

Is it possible that this is yet another attempt to discourage AIR apps? I heard they are automatically checking the "codebase" and making assumptions from there.

I was wondering this too. I also read that they used some automated tools to check if apps shared a certain amount of common code. After reaching a certain percentage, they considered the apps could be aggregated into one. I don't know if, when you create an AIR App Store release, the whole AIR runtime is put into the final code, or only the useful parts. I don't know if it could play a role with this issue.

    MJD1981
    MJD1981
    Inspiring
    July 18, 2018

    Could be a coincidence, but it only started happening to me when I migrated to AIR 30. I submitted an AIR 29 app recently with no issues. I may try to submit something built differently to see if it flies under this particular radar.

    There's definitely no human logic to what is happening!

    Frédéric C.
    Frédéric C.
    Inspiring
    July 13, 2018

    Unfortunately, we have been struggling with this for almost a year now. Since 2013, we have released a series of Oracle Cards and Guided Meditations apps (you can see examples of our apps here: www.indie-goes.com). Last September, Apple began to refuse apps updates, asking us to consolidate them.

    We tried to negotiate with an Apple representative, but with limited success. We only obtained to be able to update our apps till December 2017, which allowed us to implement some features in our single apps for a smoother transition to the consolidated one. For example, we wanted to enable our users to transfer their purchases from single apps to the new portal. We also wanted to display a message in the single apps about the new portal, so people were aware of this new model.

    We spent almost 6 months working hard on a consolidated app for our oracle cards decks. It was really challenging on many levels: business, technical, design and marketing. We even had to setup a web server and some web services for in-app purchases migration between apps. We released our new consolidated app on Feb 2018. Now our single apps are still on sale on the store, but we can't update them any longer, which is very frustrating (for example Facebook updated some security stuff, and we won't be able to update the code, which will break this feature). And our users still globally prefer to download our single apps than get the consolidated one, by the way, because that's just more obvious to them .

    Yesterday we submitted a brand new app based on numerology, and we hoped that it would be accepted as it is not based on the same principle as cards. We tried to make the app as different as possible from the rest. But it was rejected in 5 minutes after the review began, for spam design policy. I wrote to our Apple contact, but no reply yet. This is preposterous. We are absolutely not the kind of spammers who upload 10 versions of Solitaire or Flappy Bird to saturate the store. We always create original, carefully crafted apps. But the review team doesn't seem to care, and if your apps vaguely resemble each other, they'll ask you to put them all into one, which doesn't make any sense. It's even worse if each app is associated with a different brand, as you simply can't put them all inside the same app from a marketing point of view.

    There is one thing that is even more disgusting: yesterday I checked my competitors apps, and they keep publishing and updating oracle cards apps that are exactly clones of each other, with just varying text and content (which is the exact definition of design spam, according to Apple). Last week they updated 24 of their identical apps without any issue. But since our competitors are bigger players, it seems they had the right to continue publishing apps, which is terribly unfair. Our business got hit hard by this, and we had to postpone many projects to migrate to the consolidated model. When we see that our competitors can still publish and update products that show the exact same issues that caused problems for us, we are very upset (and this is an understatement).

    Frankly I'm sorry for you, and I wish you to find a solution with Apple. I think you'll have to ask for an Apple representative to contact you, so you can see that issue with them.

    Best of luck, you're not alone.

    J
    joeboy_ukAuthor
    Inspiring
    July 18, 2018

    It's a pain isn't it. It seems with me what's happened is I made 4 apps for photographers that are all similar in structure but the content is different, so it falls under this new rule. But you can't put 4 competitors apps into one app - it can't work. The key difference is they all have a client area specific to them so it's not just a directory or marketing app, its a tool for their specific clients

    anyway, as a result of that it seems that anytime i submit a new app they bring this up again and again, so my new apps are being punished because of this issue.

    Frédéric C.
    Frédéric C.
    Inspiring
    July 18, 2018

    Just to be sure I understand: do you mean that you have a bunch of similar apps in your catalog, but now they refuse systematically all your new apps, even if these new apps are completely different from the apps you already published?

    If that's the case, that would mean we are blocked by all the apps we already published, which would be nonsense. My contact at Apple explicitly told me that my previous apps could remain "as is" (and I couldn't update them again), and that my new apps would have to be consolidated versions of those old apps, or original concepts. But by what you say, it seems that as long as those old apps exist, you can't release any new original apps that are based on any different concept or design.

    Colin Holgate
    Colin Holgate
    Inspiring
    July 12, 2018

    No, haven't had that issue. You are allowed to ask them for examples. Presumably you have some apps that are not completely different to each other, that they are thinking of as examples.

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