Standard Works

Sure, sometime around the holidays it appears Apple started to crack down on apps that don't conform to their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). In reality that's a good thing as it makes the end-user's experience more consistent.

Our first encounter with that was the Play button issue that I mentioned previously. That was the first time they had ever rejected any of our updates or submissions and it should have never been rejected that time because our Play icon was custom drawn (not Apple's standard one) which makes it exempt from their HIG guidelines.

The last two were because, first, somehow they mistook the grid views we use for the selection of books, chapters, and verses as a standard user interface (UI) control that Apple distributes. They didn't like the fact that the book, chapter, or verse stayed selected when you navigated back up the hierarchy. They have that criteria for their UI controls, but not for custom controls, which ours is. Second, the reviewer didn't realize that the version number our application shows in the little About window in the application gets automatically updated based on the actual version number that's shipped in the application. He thought the version number we displayed was somehow wrong and incorrectly rejected it for it.

Needless to say, we're a little frustrated as all three rejections so far should never have been rejected in the first place. It's also not just us, it's happening to quite a few other developers. If you were to make a trivial application with a trivial UI, you probably wouldn't have much of an issue getting it approved, but as our UI is fairly complex with lots of custom drawn components, it's an easier target to nitpick at stuff.