Apple wanting me to consolidate ALL apps

[joeboy_uk]

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?

[Colin Holgate]

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.

[Frédéric C.]

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.

[joeboy_uk]

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.]

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.

[joeboy_uk]

yeah that's kind of what happened. Anything new i submitted was given that reason even when it wasn't similar. I had to fight tooth and nail with the review board and in the end requested a phone call. In that discussion I was able to make some headway and explained the issue. I also have a number of very simple primary education apps that are similar but aimed at special needs students where consolidating them would impede their use. I was able to get the person on the phone to understand and he seemed to lift this ban.

But now every app I submit seems to automatically get this response then I have to go through it all again with them. It's almost like it's an auto response thats been put on my account. Once the review was literally like 30 seconds between gong to review and then being rejected and that was the clue that nobody had actually even looked at it.

[Frédéric C.]

Yeah, same here. My last submitted review lasted just a few minutes before it was rejected. Seems like the review team is totally saturated, and now they almost reject apps systematically without really trying to understand what it is about. Only the most resilient and stubborn developers seem to get their app finally accepted.

[joeboy_uk]

More on this. They hit me with the spam one. I checked and I had one old app that was a little similar s I deleted it and they continued with the review as normal. Asked me to change the camera roll permission alert. Which I then did. All was good and I had fixed all their issues. Waited for the app approved message.

Then they went back to hitting me with the spam one.

I now don't have a single app like the one i'm submitting which is a simple random image selector from a set of images the user creates. I have primary education apps but none of them related to randomly selecting an image. So they are effectively saying that because this app is aimed at the same target level I should consolidate every app I have thats a primary education app and make them into one.

Let's see if I can change their minds. Madness.

[MJD1981]

I also made the mistake of deleting old apps to appease them, but nothing works. All I did was halve my own income and damage my own relationship with my audience.

I was hoping I would get clearer answers from a phone call, but they listened politely before giving me the same vague advice that is not at all practical.

My only hope now is that they tire of having these confrontations and eventually back down. I'll try again in 3-6 months.

[joeboy_uk]

Success. It's been approved

Here's proof I think this has something to dod with an automatic flag on my account. After it had been into normal review and I fixed the camera roll modal alert issue. It went back to 4.3 spam. I sent them this message:

"

No, Look through the messages we have had. You hit me with this one right at the start of this review. I then deleted the only other app Image Spinner that is like this one. Then you began the proper review and I had to work on the camera permission.

I now don't have any apps like it so can not consolidate this with anything. It needs to be a standalone random image selector because it is designed for special needs children who can not be confused with multiple features totally unrelated to randomly picking an image.

"

They then replied with

Hello,

Thank you for your response. We will continue with the review, and will notify you if there are any further issues.

Best Regards,

App Store Review

"

and then 1 min later it was approved

[Frédéric C.]

Congratulations!

[Colin Holgate]

What was the phrase you had used for the camera roll permission, that they didn't like?

One worry I have about that is that to save a photo you only need write permission, and AS3's camera roll feature opens it for read and write. There is a separate permission for just write permission, and I've used the read/write one, even though the app doesn't need to read in photos from the camera roll.

[joeboy_uk]

it wasn't the phrase they didn't like - it was that I didn't have it in the actual permission request. I always used a modal alert before the request to say "hey, in a second you are gonna be asked for permission to use the camera roll. Here's why ..." sort of thing.

This reviewer didn't like that even though every other reviewer for years approved it

[MJD1981]

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.]

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]

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!