Apple appears to have quite a task ahead of it as it plans to review every app now featured in the App Store, before contacting developers about those with problems.
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Apple is giving developers whose apps require a little love and attention 30 days to bring them up the required standard.
The company’s App Store Product Page offers a set of best practices for developers to help create effective app names, icons, keywords, screenshots and descriptions. And it’s about time.
Apple has announced that starting September 7, it will begin reviewing and removing apps that don’t function as intended, don’t follow current app review guidelines, or are outdated. So much so that it mentions it twice in the App Store Improvements of Apple Developer. You can pay a friend by simply saying something like “Hey Siri send Jacob Kleinman $20 using Cash”. As of June 2016, there are 2 million iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Apple said this week that it would be on the lookout for apps that don’t work as they had initially intended or fail to follow its review guidelines. Some of them were built on an older version of iOS and never updated. So it’s time to improve App Store discovery.
As a result, the number of developers interested in iOS fell by 8%. Apple has been observing and paying attention to apps with enormous names.
It sounds like Apple is handling this the right way because even if an app is removed from the App Store, existing customers won’t experience any interruptions. In this case, you have to search for the app named WhatsApp Messenger.
So Apple has announced plans to start cleaning up. From now on, app names have to be shorter than 50 characters. According to the email blast, the new suggestions would be implemented on September 7th, which is the same day when Apple will be hosting its iPhone 7 event. Apps that crash on launch will, however, be removed from the App Store immediately.
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Though I don’t know what pushed Apple toward this posture, it’s welcome, especially if you’re a developer hoping and praying you can generate a revenue stream from your beloved app that just can’t seem to get noticed.
