iDOS 3 App Review appeal rejected despite UTM PC Emulator Approval

We're living in times where big companies create (unlawful) law systems (theoretically based on law _somewhere_) and force others to obey (you must agree to our terms), without giving possibility to appeal nor have their rights proven under the real court (because it would be for example too expensive, or because that "you have accepted our terms").

This was funny unless people jobs and lives started to rely on those big companies, and their _de facto_ monopoly (if your store vanishes from Google Maps your store will surely vanish in real life eventually)

This is really interesting. Our app Sticky (https://getstic.ky) has been rejected based on guideline 4.7 too. We are a social media app and included HTML5 games. Apple kept claiming that "offering HTML5 games appears to be the primary purpose of your app" which is not the case (certainly not in the update we are submitting) as we have several other features with equal weight. The changes to guideline 4.7 which allow HTML5 mini-games or mini-apps and which allow emulators were made in late January of this year, shortly before the US DOJ antitrust suit, where these issues are central, was filed (March). I imagine Apple changed the guideline for a legal or PR reason related to that suit, but does not really want to follow its own updated guidelines and so is finding every excuse it possibly can to reject emulators and apps with HTML5 mini-games/mini-apps. In our case, after the appeal, we were called up by someone from Apple who started the call saying they did not consent to it being recorded (how's that for inspiring trust?), who walked-back what they had said about HTML5 (and of course they did not put that in writing in the message they sent afterwards), but then came up with a couple of brand-new reasons for keeping our update off the store: claiming that we had changed the app concept... because our app was different some 4 years ago and hundreds of updates ago when it started! And including mentioning rule 4.7 regarding emulators... which we are not and do not claim to be! So I'm glad that you made this public, because I suspected we were not the only ones who were getting bogus rejections around rule 4.7, and you have confirmed it. If our issue is not resolved by the end of the week intend to publish the entire history of communication with App Review printed-off from App Store Connect so people can have a look and see for themselves.

I had to add ?updated to the URL because a previous version of the article was discussed last month [1]. The comments widget on that site appears to vary depending on the exact URL even if the content is the same, so if you want to view the comments and replies placed on the article itself, use the original link: https://litchie.com/2024/04/new-hope

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40782541

This is especially dumb considering that RetroArch was approved and supports DOS emulation. I’ve used it to run a few DOS games already.