Apple updates App Store review guidelines, calls out creepy apps, slides towards HIPAA

Apple released an updated version of their App Store review guidelines in preparation for the release of iOS 8. Whoever wrote the prose for these guidelines deserves a pat on the back. They are clear and written for humans. For example, here are the main bullet points:

• We have lots of kids downloading lots of Apps. Parental controls work great to protect kids, but you have to do your part too. So know that we’re keeping an eye out for the kids.
• We have over a million Apps in the App Store. If your App doesn’t do something useful, unique or provide some form of lasting entertainment, or if your app is plain creepy, it may not be accepted.
• If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
• We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
• If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
• If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal data from users, copy another developer’s work, or manipulate the ratings) your Apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the developer program.
• This is a living document, and new Apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your App will trigger this.

If your app is creepy (see “I’ll know it when I see it“), no need to apply.

Brings to mind this quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt [h/t Kyre Lahtinen]:

“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

There are a number of sections added to the guidelines, including those for Extensions, HomeKit, HealthKit, and TestFlight.

Thinking about getting into the HealthKit business? Be sure to read that section completely, as well as the referenced sections of the iOS Developer Program License Agreement (by the way, Apple, that link is broken). I think it’s a matter of time before the App Store collides with HIPAA, Title II of which concerns itself with “maintaining the privacy and security of individually identifiable health information as well as outlining numerous offenses relating to health care and sets civil and criminal penalties for violations”.