Apple's Absurdity

Ok, I seriously think Apple must be trying their hardest to annoy developers. Tonight I received the following email:

Dear Brian,

We noticed that your application, Radio Paradise, which is live on the App Store is not appropriately rated. In order to change the rating of your application, you will need to resubmit a new binary to iTunes Connect. Please reply to this email once this has been completed, and we will expedite your review.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Ok, now, let me be clear on one point. The app rating is not something that is negotiable with Apple. If you submit an app with what they feel is an incorrect rating, Apple will reject it.

So, do you notice anything missing from this email? Apparently, Apple prefers to play a guessing game. I get to try to guess what app rating they want, and each time I guess wrong, they'll get to say "Bzzt! Wrong!" and reject the app.

What the heck Apple? Why not just tell me the freaking rating you want?!?!?! It's not like I have any choice in the matter. Even simpler, why not just change the rating to the one you want. The rating you want is the only real option I have.

Apple is acting like some twisted insecure friend who wants to put you through some stupid head-game tests just to make you demonstrate how much you really do love them. And you know something Apple? The love is wearing thin.

To be clear, I don't have a problem re-rating the app. I'll put whatever rating Apple wants. I honestly don't have a choice in the matter anyhow. But making me guess at what rating they want - that's just absurd. Obviously they have a rating in mind. Why not just tell me what it should be?

UPDATE: I sent a couple email messages to Apple asking for clarification on what rating they'd like me to assign to the app. As of 8/31, Apple never replied. I finally just resubmitted the app with the rating I felt was appropriate (12+) and sent another email to Apple letting them know (as they requested) that I resubmitted the app. Oddly, even though Apple never even acknowledged my previous two emails asking what rating they'd like, Apple did immediately reply thanking me for resubmitting the app. Sheesh. Apple is definitely playing the twisted insecure friend role well. Reminds me of an old girlfriend...

Important iTunesConnect changes

In case you haven't read, Apple has made two significant changes to the app store over the past few days.

1) App Title: Once entered, you can no longer change the title of an app. It can only be changed again if you resubmit a new app for review, or your app is in the "rejected" state. This applies to all current apps. All existing apps are locked with their current titles.

2) Keywords: There's a new keywords field for every app. These keywords, along with the app title will be used for searches in iTunes. Once entered, keywords can not be changed until you resubmit a new app for review (or the app is in the "rejected" state), so make sure you choose your initial keywords wisely! Keywords are also limited to 100 characters (including the comma separators).

I'm a bit surprised about the app title being locked without any prior warning. It seemed to be a pretty common occurrence for developers to append an "On Sale" or "50% off" as part of the app description when they were having a temporary price reduction and now this will be locked as their app title until they submit a new app.