Is the Apple app review and approval process a bit too far stretched?

[Alessandro71]

Decursus - from Latin "downward course", is an app that provides a visual, interactive representation of your lifespan. It is available for Android platform.
When I submitted Decursus to the App Store, I was expecting some difficulties, because of the "sensible" theme it addresses.

It turned out that was not the case.


Here is an excerpt from the review process communications between me and Apple, with some notes in-between

Apple:
We found that the usefulness of your app is limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes.

Me:
as specified in the app description, this is an artistic installation: art has no purpose other than causing people think. The visual/artistic representation provided by the app is not available elsewhere.

The "art" side of the app seems difficult to grasp.

Apple:
We still found that the usefulness of your app is limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes.
We understand that there are no hard and fast rules to define useful or entertaining, but Apple and Apple customers expect apps to provide a really great user experience. Apps should provide valuable utility or entertainment, draw people in by offering compelling capabilities or content, or enable people to do something they couldn't do before or in a way they couldn't do it before.

Me:
As for your observation: "We still found that the usefulness of your app is limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes." I ask you to consider the following facts:
- the app is free: there is no payment requested to the user
- the app purpose is clearly specified in the app description: no misleading claims are conveyed to the user
- the app is classified as "art", with "no practical purpose except causing people think"
- the app provides a interactive, personalized, graphic artifact that is not found anywhere else
- the screenshots you attached for reference just proves the consistent, minimalistic design of the app itself, and just reinforces the "artistic" concept of the app

Please also consider the "minimal amount of content or features" this wide recognized piece of art has: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...#/media/File:Tableau_I,_by_Piet_Mondriaan.jpg
Consider also that you should pay to see it in a museum, while this app is free.
Art is controversial by definition, and tests on a sample of users showed that people are reacting to what they see with reason and emotion, and this is clearly the effect of art on human beings.

The "art" argument seems addressed, so they bring up another argument: it look specious to me

Apple:
We still noticed several issues in your app that contribute to a lower-quality user experience than App Store users expect, such as:
- Your app does not use expected iOS gestures
- Your app did not integrate with iOS features.
- Your app did not include iOS features. App Store apps should use native iOS buttons and include iOS features other than just web views, push notifications, or sharing.

Me:
I see that there is no real answer to my previous observations regarding app content and features, but now, after 3 reviews, a new rejection reason about design, is freshly introduced.
I have the feeling this was added just to reinforce the rejected status, since the app design hasn't changed since the first review, and is consistently minimal on purpose.
Is it possible to escalate this review to a supervisor, to have a different point of view on the issue? Thank you.

So they play the "privacy" card...

Apple:
We noticed that your app requires users to register with personal information that is not directly relevant to your app’s core functionality.
Specifically, the following fields or actions are required but do not appear to be directly relevant to your app’s core functionality:
- Date of Birth
- Gender
- Country

Me:
regarding your observation: "...personal information that is not directly relevant to your app’s core functionality" this app core functionality is generating a calendar of the user's lifetime based on statistical data, so:
- date of birth
- gender
- country
are strictly related to the core functionality and can't be removed without removing the core functionality itself.
This data is not stored nor shared, and it's just used to generate a graphic depiction of the user life.
I understand that this is a unusual concept, which is all what the app is about, so I'm available to any other explanations that may be necessary.

There is no privacy issue here, and only the bare minimum needed data is really asked.
But, sadly, we're back to square one:

Apple:
The usefulness of your app is still limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes.



It looks like I won't be able publish my work, which is free to the user, has no in-app advertising, does not share any user data, but still I need to pay 99$/year to have the privilege to develop for their platform.

In the absence of technical/legal/moral reasons, should the review process be allowed to judge on concepts?

 

[hatzisn]

It looks like I won't be able publish my work, which is free to the user, has no in-app advertising,

You answer yourself your question. Add in-app advertising (apple's way) and if you put some dollars in their pocket they will unroll red carpets for you to step on to publish your app.

 

[MikeH]

Alessandro, I absolutely love the completeness of your answers. The whole conversation with Apple is art in itself. All I can say is: consider that these people are not human, they're robotic and as such would never see art as we do. You're talking to "deaf to art" ears unfortunately. I had a similar experience with them with my mood light app. They said not enough functionality (well duh its meant to relax not stimulate) so I added a subtle analogue clock and they accepted it. After some years, they reviewed it again and rejected it once more for the same reason, lack of functionality. See, its their circus and they only want their kind of monkeys.

 

[Alessandro71]

these people are not human, they're robotic

Are you suggesting I just should answer "Hey Siri, approve my app", and bang! problem solved!

 

[tufanv]

What I learned from my converations with app review team: You must try to implement what they want and talk to them like you are obeying them or you won't be able to publish it ever

 

[copanut]

I like your app, even if it's a bit distressing to see how little time I have left!

I agree that each of the app stores can be very arbitrary and annoying in their own ways. I have had to go through multiple cycles for each in order to get my app published, with rejections for different reasons for each store - sometimes legitimate, sometimes not.

Your app reminds me of this article on the Wait But Why site. You might find some ideas there that would be useful for the app.

Some ideas for functionality that might not be too hard to add but may help get past the store zombies:

- Identify the user's birthday each year by making that square a different color.
- Allow the user to show the life calendar in different granularities besides days (weeks/months/years).
- Allow the graphic to paint such that it fills the available width of the device - right now it paints in a portrait width with a fixed number of squares per row. This leaves a ton of space wasted on a large tablet, for example.
- Allow the graphic to auto-rotate to landscape.
- More ambitious - allow the user to add a note to any square, so for example they could identify key dates of their life in the past and major goals for the future.
- Allow for the graphic to be exported/ downloaded, perhaps to PDF.

Best of luck.

 

[f0raster0]

What I learned from my converations with app review team: You must try to implement what they want and talk to them like you are obeying them or you won't be able to publish it ever

agree!! same experience. (in Android and iOS)