What time is it? Thanks to an App Store rejection of a simple analog clock app for the iPad, we have no way of telling you—which I guess means it’s time for another silly rejection story.
Isaiah Carew, an indie developer who runs YourHead Software, was perusing the App Store for an app that would essentially turn his iPad into an analog clock. With such a fine, large display lying around, it might as well be used for something when it’s not being, well, used.
To his surprise, he didn’t find a single free, quality analog clock app in the App Store, so he decided to make his own. After an evening of work, he had created just what he needed: a simple, no frills, analog clock for his iPad. Figuring others might be interested, Carew submitted his app to the App Store. A few days later he received a response: “We’ve reviewed your application and we have determined that this application contains minimal user functionality…”
Even though limited functionality was what Carew had in mind when he developed the app—it’s a clock, for crying out loud—he took this response as a hint that he needed to add more features. So he added an optional ticking sound, an option to hide the second hand, and the ability to re-enable the iPad sleep timer, which he had turned off by default.
He submitted again, and received the same response. What gives? There’s a wide selection of similarly feature-less clock apps available right now—but either digital or paid—so why reject his? Does Apple have some kind of vendetta against analog clocks? We may never know, since Apple doesn’t often talk about this kind of stuff, but what we do know is that yet another perfectly fine app has been rejected via the App Store approval process.