In my last SRE role I was the unfortunate victim of having to maintain a mobile app submitted to both the Android and iOS app stores. I would never wish it on my worst enemy. It was the one thing that I could absolutely _not_ guarantee any sort of reliability with. It was all up to the random person who happened to review the current release and the release process could be as quick as a day in the best circumstances or up to two weeks if we got a particularly difficult reviewer. They seem to have absolutely no context sharing between reviews.
This kind of thing reminds me of why I've always felt there shouldn't be a gatekeeper. Add your repos, install your apps. Folks should be allowed to have more than one repo to install apps from.
What an insane ruling considering Co-Star is entirely an astrology app and was picked as an app store "Editor's Choice" at some point.
Reason to Escape Walled Gardens of the Week
as much as i loathe astrology, im not sure why astrology would be blanket banned in the first place.<p>and i am surprised that apps like "Night Sky" (great app, no affiliation) made it past review if the app store reviewers are incapable of telling the difference.<p><a href="https://darkhours.io/" rel="nofollow">https://darkhours.io/</a> does look really cool, i hope they get this sorted out.
The "Astrology" reason emphasized in the article isn't the main reason, they actually quickly talk about it:<p>> the App Review Board and the Review Board responded that they determined the original rejection was valid because, I shit you not, “We understand that the app includes a live tarot reading feature.”<p>So that's it, they need to remove the live tarot reading. Which to me while not being astrology, isn't much better.
There is no live tarot feature. Thats the point.
i put tarot + astrology in the same bucket (and, it appears after some quick searches, so do astrologers and tarot-readers or however you call them)<p>><i>So that's it, they need to remove the live tarot reading.</i><p>dark hours doesnt have live tarot reading.
You missed the fact that the article also explained there is no feature like that in the app.
Did you read the article the app contains no such thing anywhere it’s an astronomy app not astrology and is deeply rooted in real science
I wonder what the internals of the App Store process are. For most app approval processes you can tell because you'll get connections from the Philippines etc. so I assume what's going on here is that these reviewers have a range of English proficiency with a median below what an American developer is used to. Then the rest is just hallucination from the human, guessing at what they're looking at.
Is astrology not allowed in app store? That's kind of a weird thing to ban.
Probably not directly, but indirect by the anti spam criteria: If there are too many similar apps, from whatever category, they will just reject new apps.
Damn. What a shocking level of incompetence.<p>Has Apple really sunk that low?
I am quite an Apple fan, but this dampens my enthusiasm considerably.<p>How many great apps are rejected, but build by people without reach?
From <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/apples-tightly-controlled-app-store-is-teeming-with-scams/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/apples-tigh...</a><p>> In a sworn deposition in the Epic lawsuit, Phillip Shoemaker, the former head of the App Review team, said employees in his department generally did not have a technical background in computer coding. They needed to know how to use a Mac and an iPhone, he said.<p>> “Qualifications were that they could breathe, they could think,” he said. And they typically worked at the Apple “Genius Bar” at the company’s retail stores. It typically took about 13 minutes to review a new app, Shoemaker said in the deposition.
Reject this, but allow a billion spammy gambling scam apps pride of place in App Store searches. Gross.
I look forward to this app now being approved because getting a viral post on reddit/HN/Twitter is what passes for customer service in 2026.
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