The incompetence returns to Apple’s App Store approval process

It has been several weeks since a story has been posted about some seemingly retarded and incompetent move on behalf of Apple’s App Store approval team.  However, not wanting to disappoint, the App Store approvers have once again given us something to talk about.  What exactly is the cause for concern this time?  Would you believe it all revolves around something as trivial and miniscule as a tiny icon that couldn’t occupy  more than 40-50 pixels square?

Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper, an app that lets you store web pages for viewing later, has voiced his displeasure for the latest rejection brought to him by Apple’s finest and brightest.  Last week, Arment submitted Instapaper 1.4 to the App Store for approval not expecting it to take long to appear for users to download.  However, he was surprised a few short days later with a rejection notice.  Why?  Apparently an icon he used, (shown above) was too similar to an iPhone, a problem that has caused other apps such as Pocket God.  One would think that having an icon that looked like an iPhone would be fitting on an iPhone game.  Sadly yet somwhat humorously, if you though this very same thing, you would be wrong.  Apparently the iPhone and its content has no place for iPhone looking icons.

For now, Mr. Arment has said that he is going to to redo the icon from the ground up so that it can in no way be confused with an iPhone.  Hmm, maybe a Blackberry, or better yet, a Windows Mobile phone would be more to Apple’s liking.  What do you think?

Hey Apple, I have an idea, instead of pushing developers away, why don’t you stop being so ridiculous with the whole app approval system and stop wasting developers’ time, money, and energy with such stupid and trivial things.  It might make your developer base a tad bit happier – something you could use seeing as how it already takes you longer than it should to approve/reject apps.  Am I alone on this feeling here folks?

Source: Tech Crunch