Apple Inc. has officially published the App Store Review Guidelines in an effort to facilitate the growth of the App Store and to alert developers of what applications are likely to be rejected by the review staff. In what can be considered the developers’ Bible, given its importance, this “living document” (Apple’s words) outlines a significant number of points that developers must take into consideration before both developing and submitting an application. However, some closer scrutiny of the document reveals a number of interesting and unexpected points, as well as significant grey areas – presumably for legal purposes – that may hinder rather than help developers understand what is permitted.

Functionality Guideline 2.11: “Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them” – with over 250 000 applications in the App Store to date, a number of developers have taken to reworking and redesigning applications that already exist, like calculators and to-do applications. If there are no new notable features, will Apple start to reject applications with only cosmetic changes? Personally, I place high value on the design of an application, and laud developers who spend the extra time creating an application that looks as good as it performs.

Functionality Guideline 2.12: “Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected” – how do developers define that word ‘useful’ in an electronic world where there is growing demand for both new and existing products every day? And more importantly, how do Apple define it?

Push Notifications Guideline 5.7: “Apps cannot charge users for use of Push Notifications” – a number of applications, for example Boxcar, used to charge for this service. We’re glad to see that it’s gone. But if developers create both ‘lite’ and ‘pro’ versions of their application, and push notifications only exist in the ‘pro’ version, does this breach the guideline – even if there are other features in the ‘pro’ version?

User Interface Guideline 10.2: “Apps that look similar to apps bundled on the iPhone, including the App Store, iTunes Store, and iBookstore, will be rejected” – Messages, Photos, Camera, Notes, Calculator, Voice Memos; all of these applications have rivals in the App Store with some resemblances, albeit not identical. Is this guideline punishing developers for making good use of the Apple SDK, to ensure that their application has good integration and appears suited to the iPhone?

Scraping and Aggregation Guideline 12.3: “Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links, may be rejected” – how far do Apple intend to go with this? Are news application that scrape content from their desktop website and place it into an iPhone application, with little or no  change, in breach of this regulation?

Has Apple been intentionally vague in their Review Guidelines document? It has certainly increased their liability, on account of developers now being more aware of when an application has been rejected wrongfully. On the other hand, it may prove to ease the approval process and encourage new developers to turn their idea into a reality, now that official guidelines – even if they aren’t entirely clear – are in place.

As developers, how do you feel about this document? Is it what you hoped for?

Apple Logo courtesy of Wikipedia.

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