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Apple Begins Rejecting Apps With 'Hot Code Push' Feature (apple.com)
Apple has long permitted "hot code push", a feature that allows developers to continuously deploy changes to their mobile apps and have those changes reflect in their apps instantly. This allowed developers to make quick changes to their apps without having to resubmit the new iteration and get approval from the Apple Store review team. But that's changing now. In response to a developer's query, Apple confirmed that it no longer permits "hot code push." The company told the developer: Your app, extension, and/or linked framework appears to contain code designed explicitly with the capability to change your app's behavior or functionality after App Review approval, which is not in compliance with section 3.3.2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement and App Store Review Guideline 2.5.2. This code, combined with a remote resource, can facilitate significant changes to your app's behavior compared to when it was initially reviewed for the App Store. While you may not be using this functionality currently, it has the potential to load private frameworks, private methods, and enable future feature changes.
Surprised they ever allowed developers to do this? Surely in defiance of the objective of it being checked in the first place if you can just change it once approved.
Money. You're doing it for money, and that's where the app revenues are.
"Apple has long permitted "hot code push", a feature that allows developers to continuously deploy changes to their mobile apps and have those changes reflect in their apps instantly. This allowed developers to make quick changes to their apps without having to resubmit the new iteration and get approval from the Apple Store review team."
Is it just me or does this seem like a recipe for disaster, ripe for abuse in the worst possible ways? And not just by the developer, but by anyone who hacks the developer's tool chain or system.
In other words, you could push the most intrusive, malevolent, destructive code to a user's device at will with no oversight.
Who thought having this capability was a good idea?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Let's see:
I'm a one man shop that does App development as a hobby while simultaneously maintaining a full time job. Having someone handle 24/7 hosting and billing and a sort of rudimentary QA on the final product (so the users will trust it better) is something of value. In many cases, costs and time would be prohibitive for a new, small shop to do all these things itself. So they do something for that 30% other than rubber stamp it.
Also, $99 is a pittance - how much do dev kits from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft cost?
Now another poster pointing out that the rules are different for larger companies that develop on Apple's platform - yes they are. I see competing apps that violate the backgrounding policies (for good reasons) that I could never get away with if I tried.
One example is playing silent audio while streaming via DLNA from the iOS device to prevent the OS from putting the app to sleep after 10 minutes or so. A big company just does it and has done it for years without consequence. Another small developer in my niche needed to do this as well, but was forced by Apple to remove it unless there was a specific function for it. So the developer instead added a useless "visualizer" that made graphic effects to music picked up by the microphone which is then put in the background and hidden - just to get around the rules. I have not added DLNA streaming yet because of these headaches.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
How much is an Apple computer? You can't compare the cost of the license without taking into account the hardware required.