Solving a problem

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Apple changed its developer guidelines to prohibit apps from showing apps for purchase, other than your own. I agree with Gruber — I don’t see the problem this solves.



  • http://twitter.com/jjkritner Josh Kritner

    This happens a lot in free to play games, you play a few moves, or complete a puzzle, and you have to dismiss a popup advertising another game. Some also use push notifications to do the same thing. Very annoying and a crappy user experience.

    • gjgustav

      I agree with that use of it. But it’s the prohibition of apps like appshopper’s or toucharcade’s apps that I don’t agree with. Perhaps Apple should add an exception for apps whose primary purpose is to recommend apps.

      • nizy

        TouchArcade was updated with iPhone 5 support just this weekend. Why would Apple approve if that was its target.

        I think it’s guidelines are most likely just poorly worded and in the next update will be clarified, as has happened before.

        • D Pauw

          Agreed, it makes zero sense for this to apply to apps like TouchArcade especially since they’ve had updates approved recently. This sounds like another poorly worded guideline to kill a very specific app.

  • http://www.thegraphicmac.com/ JimD

    They’re more concerned with games that force you to download another app in order to proceed with the first/existing game or otherwise earn “credits” etc. It artificially inflates the download count of those other apps – since nobody is actually using them (they’re just downloading them, then deleting them).

    Imagine if Angry Birds wouldn’t allow you to proceed past a certain level until you downloaded another app. That other app would surely move up on the popularity charts – even if not a single person every used the app beyond the initial download.

  • http://www.appleoutsider.de/ AppleOutsider.de – Sebastian P

    There are a myriad of Apps on the Appstore that promote other apps. The multiplication effect basically screws the data because people get smurfberries or some other silly items usually offered as IAP “for free” – just for downloading another app.

    This solves a problem with Apples ranking algorithms.

    Edit: ah dammit. What JimD said :-)

  • Rob

    Don’t the app promotion apps make commission on completed purchases as affiliate sellers?

    As yet I’m not aware of any dedicated app promotion apps being rejected, but if it started to happen, it might suggest Apple wants to minimize those payments.

  • TimT2011

    I have a couple of games that do a splash screen for another game, but not consistently. Often times I’ll tap play just as the ad comes up which switches me to Safari and then the app store. Stopping the process is sometimes quite difficult. What’s worse is one game is so big it uses all available memory, so once Safari kicks in, the original game is gone and it has to reload from scratch again. Pain. I’m very happy with this new rule.