14 DAY TRIAL // Remember the story about James Thomson and his PCalc widget that got rejected? As it turns out, a single App Store reviewer was behind the decision, which just got retracted. This seems only fair because the widget wasn’t breaking any rules and its developer had spent weeks coding it.
Despite receiving word that his widget would require substantial alterations or face removal from the App Store, Apple was still featuring PCalc in the “Great apps for iOS 8” section, under Notification Center widgets.
“I spent a really long time working on the PCalc widgets and making them perfect, so this is pretty crushing news,” Thomson told a handful of Twitter followers. “I’ve basically got 2-3 weeks to remove it, barring a miracle.”
“I’m going to try to escalate the decision, but it sounds like it was made high up and won’t be changed,” he later said. He then added in a separate tweet, “The irony being that I gave a talk at @nsscotland at the weekend about ‘How to be an indie developer and still keep your sanity.’”
Fast forward a few hours, things are turning around
“Just had a phone call from Apple - decision has been reversed, no changes required to PCalc’s widget. Thanks to everybody for their support!” Thomson later wrote, adding, “With great stress comes great remuneration.”
Thanks to the press surrounding his app’s rejection, Thomson got quite some visibility, which unsurprisingly translated into some extra downloads, leading some to claim that it was a marketing stunt all along. Thomson assures them it was not and that the extra cash is hardly worth the stress he was subjected to.
Tight control is still typical at Apple
Despite loosening up quite a lot after Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO, Apple has remained a company that keeps a tight grip on everything that goes in and out of its products.
Developers still have to abide by stringent guidelines to get their apps approved, mainly for security reasons but sometimes also for usability and quality. Blatant duplicates also get rejected, albeit with far less frequency than before.
In the case of widgets, Apple has instructed developers to make them as intuitive as possible. Widgets also must avoid forcing the user to engage in one too many tasks or button presses. While the PCalc widget was initially regarded as a multi-task no-no, the “sum” of all things (pun intended) eventually prevailed.
I just had a really good idea on how you could do number entry for an Apple Watch PCalc. Stop working brain!
— James Thomson (@jamesthomson) October 31, 2014