It's considerably rare for me to do this, but I'll advocate for the devil in the white suit.

Imagine you added support for a device that's not out yet, that you probably don't even physically possess (unless you're a heavy developer, and even that's probably a pre-release model), but that you're assuming will readily accept your updated app. Except when finally the device is released, it turns out the support you added for the new device was imperfectly applied, frustrating the experience of users everywhere who are used to this app working just fine on other devices but not this one.

Now imagine this happening with multiple apps, perhaps because the developer documentation for the device was an inferior match for reality, perhaps because the documentation was consistently mis-interpreted, perhaps because the emulation in development was slightly inaccurate. Whatever the cause, a vast lot of supposedly compatible apps are very much not.

Which product's image is harmed most by this outcome?

This entire thing is based on the author missing and still never noticing after writing this entire rant up the key term in the initial rejection:

  > Apps with compatibility references to a pre-GM version

Apple didn't say you can't mention the iPhone XR, they said you can't claim compatibility with it yet... the author went through some great lengths to play up the absurdity of Apple wanting to keep the model under wraps and it's pretty clear that was never what they were asking

A fun read and on the face of it, Apple's stance does seem obstinate/bizarre... but on the other hand, with my testing hat on: how can you claim to support an unreleased phone? There's not even a cloud testing service yet...

The same has happened to a few other developers. Luc Vandal tweeted that his Mac app was rejected for mentioning compatibility with macOS Mojave:

https://twitter.com/lucvandal/status/1042023268352512001/pho...

And Hendrik Holtmann said his app was rejected for mentioning iOS 12 in the release notes - after iOS 12 had been publicly released:

https://twitter.com/holtmann/status/1042062878965153792

"Fly the pirate flag, toss a hammer at Big Brother, think different — just don’t violate Section 3.2 of the Program License Agreement, and communicate to your users words that are on a billboard you drove past on your way to work. Be a rebel, but somewhere else."

Savage!! :D

Apple seemed to be very reasonable here—they reached out to the developer sensing their frustration with advice on getting their app approved. Seems to me that apple wants to help this to get approved by investing the effort of calling the developer. Remember all the complaints about how apple doesn’t communicate with developers? Seems like they’re trying to do better and I never saw any angry app updates. I mean maybe the policy is silly but there’s better ways to protest than passive aggressive release notes that would confuse the users. I mean there’s a lot of disagreeable things Apple does but is this really the hill you chose to die on?

Part of it could be legal. I don’t want to say this is likely in any way, but the bottom of every XR page says this:

> iPhone XR has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. iPhone XR is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.

It could be that they aren’t wanting to imply that they’ve given out review units or other demo units in violation of not having approval.

I’m not saying it’s super likely, but it’s also not impossible.

An extremely fun read, but the obvious "solution" to this silliness is to simply write "added support for new display sizes such as the iPhone XS." and call it a day.

But I appreciated a look into what happens when you start pushing back...

> Clearly, I’m being an obstinate jerk

Yes. That is basically the gist of it.

Messing with low level, customer care team who are just trying to enforce the policies really is pretty childish.

And people wonder why many changelogs are just "Bug fixes and other improvements".

I have noticed Apple has gotten meaner in the last 2 months in particular, and this is from someone there since the beginning.

The author tried real hard to paint this as some weird Kafkaesque attempt to keep the phone under-wraps, when really all it is is not being able to say your software is compatible with a device that isn't even out yet, and which you've done no testing on. The author comes out of this seeming slightly deranged.

This is standard. For example, you cannot mention support for macOS Mojave, or until last week, iOS 12.

ITT: Apple apologists

I love a good story where the little guy stick it to the big guy. The double irony of this is of course that Apple used to be that little guy. In an alternate reality, Steve would have gotten wind of this and done something about it.

The only technicality protecting Apple from massive anti trust regulations with regards to the store is that the iPhone actually isn't a monopoly in cell phone unit shipments.

However, many economists have noted that app revenues (not advertising) is highly skewed towards Apple's platform. When will a $100B app market stop being treated as a feature of physical phone unit shipments, worthy of its own independent regulation?

Apple’s decision a bit silly, author’s reaction embarrassing.

The thing that annoys the most about this is that he seems to hate Apple SO MUCH and yet he continues to be an Apple developer