Good news on App Store policies
Apple announced a bunch of changes to the App Store
The best news is that
… there are also apps on the App Store that no longer function as intended or follow current review guidelines, and others which have not been supported with compatibility updates for a long time. We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps for these issues, notifying their developers, and removing problematic and abandoned apps from the App Store.
It will be interesting to see how Apple approaches the developers of abandoned apps. For example:
- how much time will Apple give to release a new version?
- Which apps will be considered “problematic”?
- What’s the definition of a copycat?
I am being pedantic on purpose. I know it’s not an easy task, but I am happy it’s happening. As of Aug 31st there were 2160982 apps on the App Store. I know because I run AppVersion. Most of them have not been updated in years. When you search for an app, or browse a category, outdated apps are just noise.
For historical reasons I’d not delete them. I’d keep them in a sort of museum.
Another good news is related to the length of App names, no longer than 50 characters. I wish the same policy were applied to podcasts. There’s way to many pods exploiting the scheme: TITLE - List of important names (usually including Tim Ferris)
One step at a time, let’s see what happens in the App Store first.
UPDATE: Here’s a few more details by Apple, but I feel we are going to read a bunch of blog posts about weird experiences during this process.