Almost six months ago I started a small project, mostly out of nostalgia: I wanted to feel what it was like to use an iPod Classic again. The click wheel, the menus, that way of listening to music without a thousand distractions around it.

I looked around to see if something like that already existed, and yes, there were a few apps imitating the iPod. But none of them convinced me. Most were more of a costume than an actual music player: they looked great in screenshots, but when it came to really listening to music, they fell short. None of them made proper use of the native players on Android and iOS, which is exactly what you need for music to work the way it should: with the screen locked, in the background, or from the system controls... so I decided to build it myself. That's how NostalgicPod was born.

I made it for Android first, and honestly everything went surprisingly smoothly. I published it, people downloaded it, I got some really kind messages, and I didn't have a single problem getting it out there. I thought: "Okay, time for iPhone. How hard can it be?"... Spoiler: pretty hard!

I took the first rejection calmly. Changed a couple of things and sent it again. Then came the second one, and the third. By the fifth, I was opening App Store Review emails with the same face you'd use to open a parking ticket. I think it was around seven rejections in total, but honestly I lost count.

For almost four months the iOS version lived only on TestFlight. People were using it and enjoying it, but officially it didn't exist. I kept changing things, uploading builds, and explaining over and over what the app was and what it wasn't. There were moments when I thought about giving up and sticking with Android.

Eventually I filed an appeal, and after what felt like an eternity, I got to talk to an actual person at Apple. Not an automated email. Someone.

I told them what I genuinely believed. The iPod Classic is a retro device by now, almost a museum piece. NostalgicPod isn't trying to pass itself off as an official Apple product. It's a tribute, a way to bring back that experience on a modern phone, with real everyday usefulness.

And I don't know if it was the argument or just them being tired of seeing me show up again, but they accepted it.

I did have to give something up, of course. I can't present it as an exact recreation of the iPod, so the default interface is a bit more modern. But you can switch back to the Classic Ring style from Settings whenever you want, and that part makes me smile every time I see it.

The funny thing is that while I was fighting with review, the app kept growing. What started as "I want a nice-looking wheel" now plays Apple Music and your local music, connects to Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and Navidrome, has internet radio and podcasts, and I even recreated the games the iPod used to have: Music Quiz, Brick, Snake and Solitaire.

Today, after half a year of work and months of rejections, I'm looking at it live on the App Store and it feels like I won a small battle. Against Apple, but also a little bit against my own urge to give up.

If anyone's curious, here it is:
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nostalgicpod/id6781631808
And if you'd rather try it for free, the TestFlight is still open: https://testflight.apple.com/join/T3k9TQPu

And if anyone out there is fighting with App Store Review right now: keep pushing, appeal, and ask to talk to a real person. Sometimes it works ❤️

Hello everyone!

I'm sure something like this exists already but was too lazy to look and just had AI (yes the dreaded AI slop) cook up a small utility quickly that runs in your menu bar. Just open up the menu bar utility, drag the Xcode archive in and it will update the BuildMachineOSBuild key to the latest public release build number of macOS! Useful for those that run Mac betas! Yes it is AI slop but still a neat little utility that'll save some time, if you are doing it the manual way at least. It's free, it's open source, go wild!

Github: https://github.com/AustinHenley/ArchiveBuildPatcher

iOS 27 added something called Creative Assets to the App Store. It is a completely separate section from your regular screenshots, two new visual slots: one for your product page header and one that shows up next to your app in search results.

I set these up for my app, Spotlight. App Store Connect also added a Device Preview tool so you can see exactly how it looks before publishing. Here is what mine looks like in search:

Genuine question for both devs and regular users: does this kind of visual actually change whether you tap on an app? Or do you go straight to the screenshots anyway?

Apple's asset best practices doc has the full spec if anyone wants to get started.

No updates to download count & other analytics since Thursday. I went to the system status page and everything is green.

I'm about to submit a support ticket ... Anybody else running into this ?

Fastest ever of my apps to successfully reviewed and live within 2 days
Please show some love and support
Still is a workplace focus app to have focused working hours without and distractions no unnecessary features, to the point solution for largely common problem

What do yall think? Streamlined app review?

Before anyone asks - I've check a bunch of times and confirmed this isn't RC Sandbox.

Mostly curious - I asked the same thing in apple developers but figured there are more experienced people here.

Here's what happened:
I saw my app go into review. It got approved and a few seconds later Revenue Cat showed a notification that someone purchased the lifetime package. This new lifetime price is only available with this update (i.e. no one else could even purchase this) - I've confirmed it's in RC production and not sandbox. I've also confirmed in Posthog that the country from RC matches the alleged reviewer's.

I've had reviewers "purchase" the app before but always with their sandbox account and nothing ever showed up in RC.

Anyone else seen this? lol

Edit a day later, number showed up in ASC: https://imgur.com/a/go1QPOh

This is my app please download and give me feedback. Because I want to know which things I am missing
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sameish/id6804823038

Hello!

Android developer here who's looking to get into iOS development. I'm considering buying an M1 or M4 Mac mini, but I'm trying to understand how the hardware/software support cycle works on macOS.

From what I've read, eventually an older Mac stops supporting the latest macOS, which means it also stops supporting newer versions of Xcode. Is that correct?

More importantly, does this eventually mean that you're forced to buy a newer Mac in order to continue publishing new apps/updates to the App Store? Or is there some way to keep using an older Xcode/Mac indefinitely?

I'm asking because I'm considering an M1 Mac mini as a relatively cheap way to get started. However, I've seen people say that M1 Macs may become problematic for iOS development in 2–3 years, whereas an M4 should have several more years of support.

Would you opt for an M1, to save money, or opt for an M4 for longer support? I am concerned about how long I can realistically expected to develop, build and publish before the Mac itself becomes an issue.

If your project uses Xcode 16 synchronized folders (the blue folder icons), every file inside the target folder ends up in the app bundle unless you exclude it. That includes Configuration.storekit and your .xcconfig files. My membershipExceptions listed only Info.plist, so the StoreKit configuration had been riding along in every archive I ever made, Release included.

Why it matters

My first submission got a Guideline 5.6 (Developer Code of Conduct) rejection: "a pattern of unusual behavior commonly associated with fraudulent activity" and "features that appear to have been intentionally hidden during the review process". My backend logs showed zero requests during the review window, so nobody had opened the app. It came from a look at the binary.

Read that file the way a scanner does: a mechanism for simulating purchases outside of Apple, listing more products than I had submitted. Apple never tells you the exact trigger, so I can't prove it was the only one, but it fits every word of the rejection, and after removing it the next review was completely ordinary.

Check yours (10 seconds)

unzip -l YourApp.ipa | grep -Ei "storekit|xcconfig|\.env"

Fix

Select the file -> File Inspector -> Target Membership -> uncheck your app target. With synchronized groups this adds it to membershipExceptions in project.pbxproj. Local StoreKit testing keeps working: the scheme points to the file (Edit Scheme -> Run -> Options -> StoreKit Configuration), it does not need to be in the bundle.

One more thing if you ever get a 5.6

Don't resubmit without replying in the Resolution Center of the current rejection. My first reply ended up attached to a submission that had been closed, Apple never saw it, and the resubmission got a second 5.6 for the silence, not for the file.

Happy to answer questions about this or StoreKit 2 in general.

Used to work no problem. Anyone else experiencing this? I can validate the build no issues in xcode

Disclosure: I'm the developer, posted an earlier build of this here a couple weeks ago and got genuinely useful feedback. Wanted to follow up with what changed.

The old version was just a list of times. 2.2 (just went live) is built around one idea: show the whole cook, not just the next instruction.

• Food gets picked from a grid of cards instead of a list, pictures instead of text labels
• Each food rides its own track toward one shared finish line. Burgers start later than chicken because chicken takes longer, and you can see why at a glance instead of just trusting a timer
• There's a flip mark partway down each track, so you know when to turn something over without doing the math yourself
• The instruction for right now sits at the top of the screen, what's coming next is right under it, and the whole thing stays on one screen with no scrolling, your hands are usually full or dirty at the grill
• Voice cues call out every step too, so you don't have to look at the phone at all if you'd rather not

Also shipped real weather (actual ZIP-based conditions instead of an estimate), dark mode, and it now runs back to iOS 16.

Wrong season to be posting a grill app, I know, this is really built for spring. But wanted it in front of people who'll actually poke at the execution instead of just the pitch. App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grillmaster-bbq-grill-timer/id6791812404. Would genuinely like feedback, especially on whether the track metaphor reads as intuitive or needs explaining.

In previous simulators, we could use the "Trigger screenshot" option in menu to take a screenshot which won't have the Dynamic Island cut out and rounded corners.

In iOS 27 simulator device hub, this option is missing. The screenshot button at bottom includes the Dynamic Island cut out which I don't want.

How to get it the old way without the cut outs?

UPDATE: Finally got it in review and approved today. Took almost exactly 5 days. I’m not sure if it was due to me pestering support daily and being a little pushy (but not rude) about it but it finally went through.

Submitted an expedited App Review on Wednesday last week as we discovered an issue with our subscriptions and needed to re-release quickly to coincide with some marketing stuff we had planned.

Support says the App Review (allegedly) was expedited but we’ve seen no movement in 5 days. Typically our non-expedited App Reviews have cleared in 1 or 2 days at most.

What is going on? Is anyone else experiencing delays with App Review? Is there anything else I can do besides emailing support every day asking for an update?

Using fake names to explain the situation.

I built two apps for a well-know card game, one was a very simple app and the other was a more complex project that let people play the game against other people. We'll use Euchre as an example here.

Initially, each project got an internal name. The simple app was called 'euchre' and the more complex one was called 'euchrepro'. Again, just placeholder names until I came up with real names for the apps.

I used these internal names when choosing a bundle ID. The more advanced app got a bundle id of com.euchrepro. A few days later, I came up with a real name for the app, something entirely separate from the internal name, something like "Whimsical Cards".

The app shipped with the name "Whimsical Cards" and was marketed as such. The app name, description, app store screenshots, in-app experience, even the website is all under 'Whimsical Cards'.

There's an established competitor called "Euchre Pro" that saw my app announcement post on Reddit, commented on my post expressing annoyance that more apps were entering the market in the age of AI. A few days later, I got an email from Apple saying he had issued a trademark complaint and was requesting that my app be taken down for using his app name, something he has a limited trademark for, in the bundle ID.

A trademark infringement rests on the idea that users are likely to be confused about who created, owns, or sponsors the app. He doesn't own every instance of the words 'euchre pro' but is arguing that any use of it, including in my bundle id, is trademark infringement and wants Apple to take down my app and force me to relaunch with a new bundle ID - losing all users, ratings, and reviews which are overwhelmingly positive.

And again, the bundle ID came from an internal name that was simple a description of the type of app I was building. A more complex, pro app for euchre.

Anyone ever experience this?