Opinion: Apple's App Verification Process Harms Users
Kushal Dave, senior director of the technical department at Forsquare, believes that it’s time for Apple to change its policy regarding application verification. In its current form, it harms users.
Everyone knows that checking an app on iOS is not an easy task. It takes from a week to a month, and that’s not the worst of it. If the developer is unlucky, his game will not be accepted at all. Reasons? There are a lot of them: the content may not meet the puritanical moral standards of the verification team, may not be interesting enough or, to quote the rules of the App Store, “just frightening”.
Dave believes that such moderation harms those whose benefit it should serve – users.
The slower the application is checked – and updates to it – the later the developer will have the opportunity to fix a bug or respond to a review. What will the user do if he sees that his application continues to fail even after the review? Depending on the temperament, he will silently delete or write an angry rebuke to the developers.
Now to the rules of the store. They are too subjective, Dave is convinced. Their implementation depends solely on the desire of the verification team. Do you remember the case when the game Papers, Please was rejected because of “obscene content”? For “pornography” they considered a scan, that is, a very schematic image of the human body obtained using a scanner.
Apple goes too far in its attempts to impose its own morality on users. Imagine a car that doesn’t want to take you to a bar, or a TV that doesn’t show horror movies. Instead of freedom of choice, which Apple declared as a credo at the dawn of its existence, the company has turned into an analogue of a totalitarian state.
The most unfair thing, Dave believes, is that developers can’t even talk about their dissatisfaction out loud. It is enough to recall a line from the App Store rules: “If your application was not accepted, we have a Review Board where you can apply for an appeal. If you go to the press and start complaining, it won’t help.”
Dave is sure that the moment has come to change the situation.
“You and I have found ourselves in some kind of crazy dystopia. The proof of this is that I waited until I quit to write this post, so that he would not be hurt by those with whom I work. But together we are a force. It’s time to start speaking out.”
