Successful iPhone Game Story, WHY Apple Reject Your App

Things to consider before submitting your application to the App store

Ethan Nicholas could not pay his medical bills, and he needed extra income, a few months later he turned into a millionaire. For those who do not know Ethan Nicholas and his inspiring success story, he was the developer of famous iPhone game “iShoot”. He becomes a millionaire in seven months after launching his game. Initially he launched “iShoot” as a paid app, and soon realized that it is not getting people’s attention. He launched a freemium and lighter version “iShoot lite” and got what he was looking for. The free version was downloaded 2.4 million times, that led to 320,000 satisfied iShoot Lite players to pay for iShoot.

The success story of Ethan Nicholas is incredible and inspired many developers to make iPhone applications. Many developers are quite good with development skills and expertise; however they may stuck trying to adhere to Apple’s strict guidelines. A developer needs to understand the guidelines and rules before submitting the application to the App store; otherwise it may result in frustration.

In the recent past, developers used to take ages to complete software and applications. Update and upgrades were also meant to come in years. Upon the advent of the smartphone applications, things have changed drastically. Developers are releasing all sorts of applications in weeks and getting success, popularity, and money. Still, thousands of applications didn’t get to the Apple store and were rejected by Apple.

Why me?

Famous tennis star Arthur Ashe on his death bed explained “why me” scenario quite beautifully. It is a very inspiring story. However when an app gets rejected by Apple, the developer cannot use Arthur Ashe’s connotation. The application developer must know what precisely caused this rejection. Apple has described the rules in detail for submission, yet there are things, which may sound strange and confusing to the developers.

Application developers need to review those guidelines well before submission to avoid frustration. The guidelines page on Apple’s website states “we review all apps to ensure they are reliable, perform as expected and are free of all offensive material.” A developer can understand the words “reliable” and “perform as expected” because they are quite familiar with these terms due to “testing” phase in development life cycle. They may find “free of all offensive material” a bit confusing. For e.g., a World War II game may involve soldiers swearing and killing soldiers, ESRB still may approve it under M17+ rating. But Apple store might reject it under “free of all offensive material” category. Developers need to sort and work these things out before submitting their applications to the App store.

Things to look out

There are quite obvious rules and regulations, which developers can find and understand in App Store Review Guidelines. However when Apple rejects an application, Apple is not always very clear and precise about rejection reasons. It is very frustrating and at times depressing for developers to find the reasons for rejection. Keeping in mind the guideline and some previous experiences following are the few things you may want to look as a developer:

Loading Time: If your app is taking too much time to load, you have already lost the battle of getting attention.
Crash: Crashing apps will not do any good to anyone, let alone the strict Apple review board. Make sure that your app does not crash by applying testing in extreme conditions.
Deliver what you promise: If your app is not doing what you have promised, it will be the perfect case for rejection under “do not perform as advertised”.
Payments: With iOS 7 Apple has streamlined their strategy for making their data secure by accepting payments and credit card information only through iTunes. If your application involves any third party payments for in-app purchases, it will be rejected.
Any other development platforms: It may sound a bit extreme, but mentioning any other development platforms in your marketing text or text within your application might result in a rejection.
Sacred Fruit: Apple becomes a forbidden fruit concerning their trademark and copyrights. They have won a lawsuit against Samsung and received $290 million in damages for patent case. So be very careful using Apple’s trademark and use it under the light of “Guidelines for Using Apple Trademarks and Copyrights”.
Minimum Functionality: Apple rejects applications with minimum functionality. So make sure that your application is providing enough functions and features.
False Advertising: Apps using empty iAd banners and artificially increases the number of impressions or click-through ads will be rejected.

Conclusion

The industry of application development is still a gold rush of the old wild west. The only thing you need is to develop an awesome idea and pitch it correctly to the people and more important to get it through Apple’s application review board. Who knows, you may be the next millionaire.