YHK - yet another hacker news clone

AI is turning Apple's app review process into a nightmare for synth developers

24 points anigbrowl 1 hour ago 12 comments

erikschoster 33 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

billyp-rva 24 minutes ago | parent

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.

itake 21 minutes ago | parent

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

emidoots 18 minutes ago | parent

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.

ZeWaka 15 minutes ago | parent

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

benoau 11 minutes ago | parent

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.

benoau 12 minutes ago | parent

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.

rjh29 23 minutes ago | parent

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.

Juvination 18 minutes ago | parent

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.

solarkraft 17 minutes ago | parent

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.

seydor 6 minutes ago | parent

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

obayesshelton 2 minutes ago | parent

Similar issue with shopify apps