> My app was REJECTED from submission FOUR TIMES in row. Always same reason (eg. my app is “design spam” and “duplicates existing apps” and it is createed using “app generation template services”) as shown bellow in screenshots. Which is obvious nonsense.

You can feel the entitlement across the room from the developer. They seem to be unable to conceive that outside of their bubble there can be a real case of AI spamming that same look and feel, even if they did it by heart.

Looking at his work, it's clearly modelled after Serum (which even the article describes as "a sort of Serum 2 for iOS") so I am not sure why they think this suddenly deserves a white glove service here.

The App Store is also flooded with Synth apps, so regardless of the UI being the trigger here, I would imagine the category itself has been flagged as spammy and now has a higher bar of entry.

If anything I would use this as an opportunity to reskin and try to stand out, they're giving you a blueprint of what will perform better on the algorithm if you avoid that look if you think about it.

Or just try an Alt Store.

Everyone is entitled to run whatever the hell they want on their own device. End of.

Sure, but this developer wants to publish their app through the App Store. Not the same thing as running on their own device.

Ah but it is!

Web page

Audio software needs low latency. Can you actually make a synth in browser that's good? And integrates with DAWs?

Is entitlement always a problem? Maybe if apple didn't try their best to hold a monopoly on app distribution for a large percentage of the mobile userbase, developers wouldn't feel frustrated in this regard. Who's apple to decide which apps aren't allowed because they "duplicate existing apps", and how fairly is that even applied? Are calculators allowed on the app store? It seems awfully like they duplicate existing functionality.

Ok but now explain why there are tons of absolute trash vibe coded apps that barely do anything in the app store?

I've been waiting about two weeks for the last review for my app, I got one rejection and that took 20 days. It's a bit of a bummer but there isn't anything I can do about it.

Depending what your app is, could you consider distributing privately via TestFlight - or even making it a web app?

Doesn't apply to alllll apps - but flagging it in case you hadn't recently looked into it.. web apps can do a lot and don't charge 15%.

I'm not sure what Apple can do here; Pandora's box is open and it won't be closed. It felt like there was a flood of app releases in the early 2010s during the gold rush. I can't even imagine it now.

I noticed that Apple has been updating their documentation so developers can have less back and forth when releasing an app.

Apple has anti-spam app policies that basically limit innovation and competition in certain product categories. An extreme example would be Apple not allowing any more "sleep music apps" b/c there is enough in the store.

An investor actually approached me about buying a couple mobile apps I made b/c they are "aged" and don't need to go through the rigorous first-review approval process

They can hire more reviewers - they say they only have 500, that's the same number they had in 2020 when the Epic judge called them out for it.

And makes around $10,000,000,000 per year off the app store: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/appfigures-apple-made-over...

They can absolutely afford to hire more.

Allow third party app stores.

> I'm not sure what Apple can do here;

Hire more reviewers. Apple is making a shitload of money from App Store sales (and of course by scamming its users in many creative ways). They'd better spend it on making developers happier, not on thickening the walls of their garden.

it's not just Apple. Steam game review is now taking weeks due to the amount of AI slop being published, whereas before it was 3-5 days.

I'm not sure how platforms will handle this honestly. Of course they want to curate a bit and avoid blatant malware/spam, though.

Even just internal Steamworks requests are taking 3-5x as long.

In both of these cases the platforms are absurdly profitable, 75% profit margin for Apple, fleet of mega-yachts for Steam, the solution is they stop skimping on review and hire more people to keep up.

$1000 application fee would probably thin the herd.

>It was over a month of back-and-forth, so I threw my hands up and released it audio-only for now. What we will do is bundle the MIDI build into the binary so both AUv3s install.

Oh, so they are trying to do a soft bait and switch; where an app developer makes an app, splits its functionality, and sells both on the app store. They hope that someone buys the first app, which is missing basic functionality, not realizing they have to buy a second app to get the additional expected features. Like if you buy a video converter app that doesn't let you convert to an MP4 unless you buy a second "MP4 version" video converter app. Scummy behavior, glad Apple blocked it.

Similar issue with shopify apps

There is a surge of vibe coded apps in the iOS community.

Some of them are good - generally by musicians or sound designers who couldn't code.

Many are utter trash, designed by developers who have barely any musical taste and simply told Claude to make some glitchy reverb pedal or groovebox. They use AI to write the copy for the app store and leave the UI as default (navy with fixed width headers, often looking like more like a spreadsheet than a synth). Sometimes trying to charge as much as $30 for it. It's a scourge but on the upside, most of them have now got their dopamine fix and moved onto something else.

The title is too friendly to Apple. Sure the flood of apps is making their lives harder, but also remember that they choose to force everyone through this and you have to PAY them to do their job this badly.

It's more than that, they choose to do the absolute least they can and pocket immense profits. In 2021 the judge in the Epic case called them out for only having 500 reviewers now it's 2026 and they still only have 500 reviewers.

https://apple.com/app-store

> Every week, nearly 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 130K apps.

And they actually updated that in the middle of last year, it's not just something they forgot it used to say:

> Every week, over 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 100K apps.

HN will continue to buy iPhones and licking the boot. Nothing will change.

Apple's app review process has always been a silly game. I have a music playing app, and every actual screenshot gets rejected in review for "displaying copyrighted content" (album art). And the terms of review say the screenshots must come from the app, not be mockups. So dumb. I have a fake music collection of fake artists and albums that I load to generate screenshots ... colossal waste of time.

> Developing and releasing a VST plugin is simple. You set up a website, upload your installers, set a price, and you’re good to go.

I don't disagree with the critique of Apple's policies, but boy this made me roll my eyes.

I m waiting for weeks to just enroll in their developer program, that i have paid for. Are they deliberately stalling everything to stop people from putting more stuff in the app store? I m going to go ahead and release the android version and make sure to badmouth apple to their users. life is short