Overreaction vs Sanity. Google Play vs Apple Store.
In the last week or so, both Apple and Google informed me that one of my apps was in a small way breaching store guidelines.
I’ll paraphrase both messages here:
One of your apps hasn’t been updated in years. It doesn’t meet current guidelines. If you don’t update it — we’ll remove it in 30 days.
Apple
and
One of your apps breaks the metadata guidelines. It has a quote in the app description.
We have removed it from the store.
Both complaints are probably valid. The iOS app hasn’t been updated since 2015 and hasn’t been optimised for the latest devices. I’ll update it this month.
The Android app did have the following quote in the store description
VLC Remote is the latest Android app to earn my favor, and it’s a beauty
Androidnica
The quote has been there for at least 5 years. I’m not entirely sure whether it should count as a ‘user testimonial’ (banned) or a ‘third party review’ (I think those are ok). But either way — I’m happy to remove it.
Removing my app from the store just seems like a Massive Overreaction when they could simply have emailed me to request a change.
Originally published at https://blog.hobbyistsoftware.com on September 12, 2019.