iOS iPhone App Rules and Regulations

[ercanbas]

Hello!

Like many of you I have a killer app idea that will obviously make me richer than Bill Gates and the Wayans' Brothers. Anyway, I was curious as to what rules and restrictions are set upon iPhone apps. I want to know what I can and cannot do before I invest money into this. Is there a list or a contact I can reach for this? I am talking about stuff such as: "You can upload a picture but it cannot be pornographic"...things like that.

Thanks.

 

[robbieduncan]

It's all covered in the SDK Agreement in section 3.3.

In particular section 3.3.12 seems to cover what you are asking

3.3.12 Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or
defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or
other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by
iPhone or iPod touch users.

As you can see this is pretty open to Apple's judgment (sic): they can interpret this any way they choose.

 

[firewood]

You need to carefully read the SDK agreement (especially 3.3), the iPhone HIG manual, as well as comments on the various forums about how Apple interprets their HIG, SDK and App store submission rules.

There seem to be some additional rules about how much you can advertise a full version in a "lite" version, how close your app matches any of Apple's apps, how close your images can be to any of Apple's trademarks, what you can use Apple's icons for, how much data you can send on the cellular network, what your app should do if the network is down, how much memory your app absolutely requires, any "racy" content reachable from your app, & etc.

ymmv.

 

[RodThePlod]

There seem to be some additional rules about how much you can advertise a full version in a "lite" version...

Have you had any firsthand experience of this? I plan on submitting a Lite version of my app next week and want to avoid any pitfalls.

Reading section 3.3 now...

RTP.

 

[dejo]

Have you had any firsthand experience of this? I plan on submitting a Lite version of my app next week and want to avoid any pitfalls.

Lately, it seems to be okay to Apple to explain in help / info / splash pages the advantages of the full version. What they don't like you to do is to imply certain functionality is available and then use the accessing of that functionality as the opportunity to upsell the full version. For example, a few weeks ago a developer on the Apple Developer Forums described how his app was rejected for having a print button that didn't work in the lite version but only reminded the user this was a full-version-feature. It was later approved by removing the print button. My firsthand experience with this was to remove the Save Search and Defaults buttons from the UI in [app]CraigsHarvest Lite[/app] but to make mention of those features in our help and an info page. Our app was approved using this approach.

 

[firewood]

It appears that you can't advertise a full app by showing or mentioning any disabled UI objects or other features in the lite app. e.g. you can remove buttons, but you can't just dim them out. You can say that the game has 10 levels, but you can't say that it really has 30 levels, but 20 are missing.

 

[ghayenga]

It appears that you can't advertise a full app by showing or mentioning any disabled UI objects or other features in the lite app. e.g. you can remove buttons, but you can't just dim them out. You can say that the game has 10 levels, but you can't say that it really has 30 levels, but 20 are missing.

It doesn't just appear to say that. It actually says that.

Now in new iPhone 3.0 OS you'll be able to say it has 10 levels and there are 20 more available for in-app purchase. But you can only do that with a paid app to start with.

 

[dejo]

It doesn't just appear to say that. It actually says that.

It does, does it? Care to quote the clause?

The closest I've been able to find regarding this is:

3.3.3 Without Apple’s prior written approval, an Application may not provide, unlock or enable additional features or functionality through distribution mechanisms other than the App Store.

That doesn't exactly scream "you cannot mention features of a full version".