Apple Finally Shares App Store Review Guidelines

Apple has issued a statement that will be like music to the ears of iOS application developers.

The company has published the App Store Review Guidelines, which should help developers understand why their app has been rejected (and give them some idea of how to avoid being rejected before submitting).

In the past, Apple has often been criticized for being strict, unfair and ambiguous at times with its App Store policies. Now, we’ll finally be able to decipher the inner workings of Apple’s app approval process.

Furthermore, Apple is “relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code.” Back in April, when the debate about Flash on the iPhone was still raging, Steve Jobs was strongly against using third party development tools to create iOS apps.

“We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform,” he wrote in an open letter on Flash.

The sections of Apple’s Developer Program license that have changed are 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9, and it will take a while to fully understand what, exactly, this means for developers. More to come.

[via: mashable]

Posted in: Apple