Ridiculous App Store Rejection

I recently submitted Judge Scrabby, a companion application to Scrabby (an anagram and Scrabble word finder), to Apple’s App Store.  The application is very simple and, in my humble opinion, does one thing extremely well.  Judge Scrabby simply tells you whether or not a challenged set of words are valid according to Scrabble game rules.

Here’s the main screen where a user can get a quick refresher on how to perform a challenge and where they can enter the words being challenged:

Judge Scrabby main screen.

I figured in about seven days time I’d hear back from Apple with my approval and I’d be off on my merry way.  But alas, life with Apple and the App Store is far from easy sometimes.

About five days after my submission I received a rejection notice from Apple stating that Judge Scrabby “contains objectionable content.” I thought to myself that this had to me a mistake.  What could be so objectionable about a word verifier?  Then I saw it!  Apple was nice enough to include an attachment.  I opened it and saw the two images below (I’ve censored the “u” for your protection and in an attempt to be less “objectionable”).

judgescrabby_censored

judgescrabby_censored_2

So there we have it.  Some potty mouth at Apple entered a few expletives and deemed my app to be objectionable because the words happen to be valid Scrabble words.  The funny thing is you can enter the very same words into, oh I don’t know, Safari.  Give it a whirl and let me know what you get back.  I’ve sent a few emails to the app reviewers pleading my case and I actually got one response.  That was nice.  Too bad their response boiled down to “please see our previous email.”

At this point I’m stuck unless I remove some bad words that a user has to type to actually see.  But why should I have to do that?  There are tons of apps in the store that accept these words and do much worse with them.  Some of the apps have functionality similar to Judge Scrabby.  Other popular dictionary applications, GASP, actually define the words.   It all just feels a bit too arbitrary.  Maybe I’m just being too sensitive about this.  After all, I was born in a communist country.

You know I love you Apple.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many people I’ve “converted” over the years (my favorites are the ones that say “there’s no way you can convince me to get a Mac”).  I wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t care.  It’s not about money in this case.  Come on, seriously.  Judge Scrabby might make enough for me to buy a handful of songs and apps on iTunes.  I say this as a shareholder, user, developer, and occasional Trent Reznor quoter:

“Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck’s sake get your app approval scenario together.” NIN forums

Read more about rejected iPhone apps:

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9 Responses to Ridiculous App Store Rejection

  1. Pingback: Daily News About Apple App Store : A few links about Apple App Store - Friday, 15 May 2009 16:28

  2. Taylor says:

    Android = Instant publish :)

  3. PJ Cabrera says:

    Taylor, yeah, I bet those tethering apps that got taken down from Android Market where an “instant publish.”

    Hey, Serban, I’m a little late catching up on my Twitter. Hang in there, word on the street is that with 3.0 parental controls, potty mouthed reviewers won’t be able to get your app removed.

  4. PJ Cabrera says:

    Whoops, hehe, clicking submit without reading carefully, ouch!

    I meant potty mouth reviewers won’t be able to get your app rejected. :-D

  5. Scott Bailey says:

    Oddly, I play WURDLE on my iPhone and it allows ‘bad words’ like the second example above. I’m pretty sure it would take motherf*cker too, but I’ve not seen that one yet.

  6. Pingback: Hidden Elephant Software » Judge Scrabby Finally Approved and Released

  7. Pingback: Games from Within | At The Mercy of Apple’s Whim

  8. Normand Lefebvre says:

    I am french speaking and I do appreciate the fact that you have FRENCH list of words.
    BUT… the points that each letter gives is not according to language. The “weight” of some letters are different from ENGLISH to FRENCH (and also ITALIAN). For example W is 10 in FRENCH and 4 in ENGLISH and so on. So the number of points for each word is very often wrong and they are according to ENGLISH points of each letter. For example KODAK with the FRENCH list (not allowed in ENGLISH) give 14 points with your software, but it should give 23.
    I think that should be easy to correct.
    You will find on WIKIPEDIA that info, check for SCRABBLE LETTERS and you will get many language there.
    Thanks

  9. hard + rejections = leave apple says:

    im so f’ing frustrated with apples rejection process ( it should not be called apples approval process).

    im going to android and im telling all my friend and clients to do so as well.

    your system is seriously flawed senior jobs.

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