Held up by the small print
Getting MIZE released and past App Store review took more than two months. A missing EULA link, background audio, and how small things hold up a release.
Held up by the small print
Getting MIZE released, and keeping Apple happy, has taken more than two months. Not because of one big problem. Because of small, literal ones.
I'll say where I stand up front. I think App Store review is stringent to the point of being silly. It's been tough, and this is the story of why.
MIZE is our minimalism coach. This week, version 1.1.0 came back rejected. The fix is built and uploaded, but it hasn't gone back to Apple yet, so the update isn't approved.
Shipping a calm app has not been a calm process.
It's never the big stuff
When people picture an app rejection, they imagine something serious. A privacy problem, or a scam. For us it's been the details. A line in a store description. A setting in the audio. Things a user would probably never notice, which is exactly why they're easy to miss.
Each one costs far more than its size. A fix that takes an afternoon still means a new build and another trip through review. Over more than one round, that's how a release slips by weeks.
One missing link
MIZE 1.0.9 was rejected because the App Store description no longer included the link to Apple's standard EULA. That was it. The terms were Apple's own, and they existed. One URL had dropped out of the store text.
We put it back and made a rule for ourselves: every description we write carries that link. After that, 1.0.9 was approved and released.
It's a silly reason for a release to stop. One link in the store text, and the whole version waited on it.
Audio that never let go
1.1.0 ran into guideline 2.5.4, background audio. The public text reads: "Multitasking apps may only use background services for their intended purposes: VoIP, audio playback, location, task completion, local notifications, etc." (Apple's App Store Review Guidelines)
MIZE plays audio on purpose. Breathwork, meditations, ambient music, soundscapes and readings are all things you might listen to with the phone locked. The problem was that our audio session stayed active all the time, not only while something was playing. Now it's released when playback stops.
A minimalism app holding on to something it wasn't using. I do see the joke.
The fixed build is uploaded. It still has to be resubmitted, and until Apple says yes, it isn't approved.
The loop is the hard part
What wears on you is the loop. Every small miss sends you back to the end of the line, and you only learn about it once you're already waiting. The fix is often quick. Getting it looked at again is not.
A missing link and an audio setting each meant the same thing: stop, fix, upload, wait. For a small team, that's weeks spent on details rather than on the app itself.
So we've started treating the store listing and the system settings as part of the design, and checking them as carefully as the screens. Not because the rules deserve that much attention, but because every miss costs another round.
Read the small print first
Review rarely stops you on the thing you're proud of. It stops you on the line you forgot. For a small studio, the only real defence is caring about those lines before Apple does.
More about MIZE.
