this is my question...
I have a compilation(UITableView) of videos from youtube of a particular genre (funny videos, for example) and I want to know if this app will pass the approval process.
These videos are freely accessible by anyone in youtube, but isn't uploaded/recorded by me.
This is a concept:
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/3466/img0075.png
(obviously with a cool skin design and more options like Favorites, Share with friends, etc)
Thanks for reading.
If everything you can do with this app is possible (easily) with the Youtube app that Apple ships, it will probably not be approved. The app has to add some value. Apple has disapproved apps that copied apps that shipped with iOS before. If your app adds something it will probably be approved.
You will be breaching several license terms by doing that, not only Apple's but also YouTube's:
Excerpt from YouTube license terms, paragraph 5:
Your Use of Content on the Site In addition to the general restrictions
above, the following restrictions and
conditions apply specifically to your
use of content on the YouTube Website.
...
B: You may access User Submissions for
your information and personal use solely as intended through the
provided functionality of the YouTube
Website. You shall not copy or
download any User Submission unless
you see a “download” or similar link
displayed by YouTube on the YouTube
Website for that User Submission.
...
E: You agree to not engage in the use,
copying, or distribution of any of the
Content other than expressly permitted
herein, including any use, copying, or
distribution of User Submissions of
third parties obtained through the
Website for any commercial purposes.
There are probably other terms from YouTube that prevents you from distributing these movies though you own application. But just one of those caluses prevents you from distributin it though AppStore as detailed in Apple's terms:
5.1 You represent and warrant that: (a) You have the right to enter into
this Agreement, to reproduce and
distribute each of the Licensed
Applications, and to authorize Apple
to permit end-users to download and
use each of the Licensed Applications
through one or more App Stores; (b)
none of the Licensed Applications, or
Apple’s or end-users’ permitted uses
of those Licensed Applications,
violate or infringe any patent,
copyright, trademark, trade secret or
other intellectual property or
contractual rights of any other
person, firm, corporation or other
entity;
...
So the answer in short is no.
I am not sure but I see no reason that Apple will reject this app
Related
please excuse the beginner question but my research here shows nothing but specific programming questions.
I am currently using Wildfire app to create fb pages for contests and whatnot but don't like the WYSIWYG nature of them. I would like to be able to build pages within Facebook to have more control over their layouts and design.
Is anyone here familiar with Wildfire app and could you please explain to me how one would break away from 3rd party apps like this?
On the same note:
Without going crazy trying to create fb games deeply rooted in facebook, is it possible to build fb pages/apps such as sweepstakes, contests which may or may not post to users walls using only html/css/javascript?
Or is one forced to be a PHP developer?
If you don’t want to use 3rd party apps any more, then naturally that means creating your own apps.
You don’t necessarily need PHP or any server-side scripting language – at least most of the stuff you can do in apps can be done client-side as well. (There are only a few aspects, f.e. when publishing Open Graph actions you can specify that the publishing can only be done using the app secret – that means no one can “fake” publish an action as coming from your app, but it also requires to be done server-side, because you do not want to publish your app secret to the client. And the same for any other requests that will require your app token – you don’t want to give that away to the client either.)
But you will still need web hosting that has a valid SSL certificate. (And having your own domain as well is recommendable, because there’s always threads here about people getting user access to their apps blocked because the whole domain they are running their apps under is classified as being spammy by Facebook, even if its not their own fault.)
I've been reading the App Store Review Guidelines (including linked websites in) trying to find if there are some restrictions about the fonts that are used in the app. I'm doing an app which needs to look modern and the typography is a very important thing to make look it. I haven't found any related topics on the official documentation, but i'm not sure they will pass the review. Right now i'm using Roboto font (from Android, yes) because it looks very great but the fact that it's an Android font could bring problems on the approving process. Does anyone had this situation or knows what happened in that case? Is there any restriction about the typography used in the apps? So many thanks!
As long as you have a license ("the rights") to use the font as you are, Apple doesn't care.
App Store Review Guidelines 8.5:
Apps may not use protected third party material such as trademarks, copyrights, patents or violate 3rd party terms of use. Authorization to use such material must be provided upon request.
The license for Roboto is the Apache 2 license, available at http://www.fontsquirrel.com/license/roboto
The main thing to do is not strictly for app store approval (though it may help with human interface guidelines compliance) but for unifying aesthetics. Make sure that there really is a need to use a custom font. iOS includes quite a few fonts: http://iosfonts.com and whenever possible it's always good to use the built in components.
I'm not sure how to word this correctly, so I'm going to be a little verbose:
I'm tasked with building an app for my company that will just load a mobile website into a barebones browser with no address bar or anything. So basically the app will be just the same as if the user had navigated there in Safari (sans normal browser controls).
My question is: does Apple reject this sort of app because of it just being a wrapper around a mobile site? I'm totally lost on this, as I've never developed for iOS before and have no idea what kinds of roadblocks i might hit.
Apple may reject your app if all it does is wrap a web site in a UIWebView. You need to have more functionality in your app than just loading a web page.
From the app review guidelines for iOS:
4.2 Minimum Functionality
Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store. If your App doesn’t provide some sort of lasting entertainment value, it may not be accepted.
You may want to investigate developing your company's app as a mobile web app. There's plenty of information published by Apple (and others) about how to write mobile web apps that function similarly to native iOS apps.
Put some functionality that gives your app look like native application.
Make sure that your description for app is enough for understanding to Apple app tester about you app.
and resend your app to apple store or you can send reply to apple review team about your application.
FWIW a company I worked for put an app through the App Store that was little more than a browser in May 2013.
It probably helped that the website it pointed to had an extremely responsive design, was a media player with play buttons etc. Also played video inline, which you can't do on mobile Safari (because mobile Safari will play the video full screen).
See section 2.12 in App Store Review Guidelines:
Apps that are not very useful, are
simply web sites bundled as apps, or
do not provide any lasting
entertainment value may be rejected
I am interested in writing apps that connect to the intranet or an extranet. In other words, I would like to make private apps for my clients, but I don't want everybody able to access it and be able to download it. Do you know if there is a way to distribute enterprise apps only to a certain people? Does Android do the same thing?
The iPhone Enterprise Developer Program is targeting exactly this scenario. It allows building and distributing apps outside of the AppStore. It does cost $299 instead of $99, however; and it's available for companies with 500+ employees and Dun&Bradstreet number only. If you are small shop working for big clients, you might want to talk with them enorolling in that program so you can develop the app for them.
Update: As #lifeIsGood commented, it looks like Apple has lifted the 500+ employees requirement. At least it's not mentioned anywhere on the Enterprise Developer Program or the Choose an iOS Developer Program comparison page.
They have also added a Custom B2B Apps distribution mechanism, which seems to target the exact scenario the OP asked about.
The answer is.... sort of. You can create ad hoc distribution, but you are limited to 100 total devices in your list. So, 100 customers. Or, you can sign up for an enterprise license, but to do so your company must have 500 employees (there may be other restrictions there too).
[edit]
One suggestion might be to create your application as SaaS - and charge for the connection/data store
[/edit]
I've been looking into this too. I don't think there's a good way to do this with objective-c, but I do believe this can be done well with HTML5.
I'm reading this book http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/
The iPhone supports the web databases, offline apps, and with the webkit part you get icons so your app can look like a real iphone app and be distributed from a web site.
I don't know much about Android...
For Android, all you do is download the apk file to the phone. Then you go into Settings > Development and allow Non-market installs.
I was considering developing an application which would:
1) form part of a suite of similar applications; and
2) allow the user to download additional chargeable content.
I would be extremely grateful if somebody could point me in the direction of any resources where this approach is discussed programatically and practically (i.e. Apple's requirements for doing so as well as code samples outlining the appproach).
I think what you have in mind is In App purchases, you can start with the in app purchase guide from Apple and the quick start guide. I've implemented this and found it very effective and fairly simple to implement.
Programmatically it uses the StoreKit framework which is described in the guide I posted above.
If you want to address the suite of apps you can also run ads that cross promote them, I've seen admob used for this it has an in-house ad feature that allows you to serve ads for your own applications for free across your own apps.
You can charge for additional content with In App Purchases. After reading Apple's In App Purchase Guide as recommended by paulthenerd, you can also check out ilime.com and urbanairship.com. These are services which make In App Purchases easier to implement.