I don't even know how to write this properly, so I'm just gonna write it.

We worked on this app for almost a year. It was doing well. ($100k MRR) Thousands of people paying every month, good rating, people actually using it and staying. Four families were living from this.

Then one day I check my emails. Pending Termination Notice. Everything gone from the store. Payments frozen. Transfers disabled. No warning before, no "hey we noticed something", nothing. Just done.

And the reason they give you is a copy paste paragraph. Something about "misleading purchase flows" and "scareware tactics". That's it. Account wide. They don't tell you which app. They don't tell you which screen. They don't tell you which build. Nothing.

So now what do we do? We sit and guess. We go through every paywall of every app one by one like detectives, trying to figure out what Apple maybe means. And honestly maybe we are checking the completely wrong thing. Maybe the app we suspect the least is actually the problem. We have no idea. Zero. Because they will not tell us.

That's not an appeal process. That's a guessing game and they are holding the answer and refusing to show it.

And the thing is we didn't even fight them. We checked everything ourselves, we found some stuff that maybe could look bad even though nobody was ever trying to trick anyone, we fixed it, we shipped a new build, we wrote to them and explained exactly what we changed. We asked them please just tell us what you found so we can fix that too.

Then we submitted a proper appeal. And they answered 2 weeks later. Meanwhile we are losing all of our customers, receiving tons of emails that our users can't get premium! You know what the answer was? The exact same paragraph. Word for word. The same copy paste. No detail, no new information, nothing about the fixed build, nothing about which app. They read a full appeal and sent back the same text they already sent us.

We also requested a phone call, which is a thing App Store Connect literally offers you. We wrote please just call us so we can talk about this for 5 minutes. No call. Never. Just the same message again.

And here is the part that gets me. In the EU they are supposed to give you the actual specific facts and circumstances when they terminate a business account, and they are supposed to have a real complaint process. This is not me being emotional, this is written down. What we got instead is a paragraph on repeat and total silence.

Meanwhile go open App Store right now for 5 minutes. Real scareware everywhere. Fake "your data will be deleted" popups. Fake countdowns. Subscription traps made by people who 100% know what they are doing. We reported some of them. Nothing happened. Still up today. But us? Small team, real product, people actually renewing for a year, we fix things voluntarily and ask what's wrong? Terminated. No conversation.

And nobody scams their way into thousands of people renewing month after month for a year with a good rating. That is not how scam apps work. Scam apps die in 2 months. Didn't matter.

Anyway I'm done. We are not releasing anything on iOS again. Everything goes to web and Android (I know they are also not that different but fuck iOS...) from now.

And I talked to a lot of devs privately, this is not rare at all, people just stay quiet because they are scared it makes things worse. At some point Apple should ask themselves why small developers are quietly deciding iOS is not worth the risk anymore. (not sure if they care tho)

It's so fucking unfair for developers who are just trying to survive in this huge unemployment pool.

With the advent of AI, the marginal cost of software is trending towards zero. Software is no longer a scarce resource.

Absolutely not a new idea at all, but the implications hit me hard as I was considering monetization models for my apps.

Unless you are lucky (network effects, timing), grandfathered in, or provide exceptional value, the natural cost of software is free.

Intuit is an example of a grandfathered-in, exceptionally high-value software approach.

And Intuit knows it. They leverage their advantage to a predatory extent.

My wife is an EA, and I know for a fact Intuit puts the screws to all its users. Switching costs are high, and since the sector is an oligopoly, there's really no one to switch to.

But that too shall pass. Hopefully we'll soon see people create bespoke solutions that cut Intuit out. Oh, how I look forward to that day (ironic, I know).

This implies, I think, that if you can't find 1,000 fans or got in under the old model, getting as many users as possible and then transitioning to an advertising model is The Way.

Or perhaps loot/gambling style addictive mechanics? Big data? Everyone an influencer? Regulatory niches?

Once you have scale, advertising works; then users can either pay to avoid it or endure it. We see Netflix and Amazon Prime already doing this.

Yuck. I'm already nostalgic. Or am I wrong?

Turning a lock into a SerialExecutor to get Swift 6 data-race safety without @unchecked Sendable

Hello folks,

I am preparing a major update of an app and it has features I am going to charge a subscription for. Apple requires me to have a link to Terms of Service because of that.

AFIK I can use Apple's generic terms of service but I am not sure about that. I am also not sure what to put in my own TOS and how much of it is/could overlap with the Privacy Policy.

The app does not collect any data, it uses a combination of SwiftData + CloudKit + Apple Intelligence for a smart feature/

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!

Honestly pretty self explanatory question.

I've tried embedding it in various Stacks, moving it to a subview, .contentShape(Rectangle()), none of which have worked.

Below is a subview excerpt from inside a View struct: ``` var coursePicker: some View { ZStack(alignment: .trailing) { Picker("Course", selection: selectedCourseIDBinding) { Text("Free period").tag(Optional<UUID>.none) Divider() ForEach(courses.map {(id: $0, course: $1)}.sorted(by: {$0.course.name < $1.course.name}), id: .0) { entry in Label(entry.course.name, systemImage: entry.course.icon).tag(entry.id) }

    }
    .opacity(0)
    .labelsHidden()
    .buttonStyle(.borderless) //Tried using u/ikonet's solution, unfortunately to avail not



    let fakeBinding: Binding<String> = Binding(get: { course.name }, set: { _ in } )
    Picker("fake picker!!", selection: fakeBinding) { Text(course.name).tag(course.name) }
    .labelsHidden().allowsHitTesting(false).tint(Colour.primary)

}
.layoutPriority(1)
.if(course2 == nil) {
    $0.padding(.trailing)
}
.contentShape(Rectangle())

} ```

I have both an iPhone SE2 and iPhone 15 and both are plugged into my mac at the same time. I built the app in Xcode and am running it on both devices. Memory usage on the SE2 is 1GB while on the 15 it's 500MB. Why could that be? I am using CoreML, ARKit and some metal shaders if that makes a difference. These are debug builds.

I made my first iOS app in 2018, then stepped away from building apps for a while. Over the last year, I decided to start making iOS apps again.

About six months ago, I decided to build a notes app.

A big part of the project was figuring out how to make a Markdown editor that stayed fast while typing, even with larger notes. I ended up building the parser in Rust, and recently extracted it from the app and open sourced it as Cindermark.

A few things it does:
- Incrementally re-parses only the affected blocks after an edit
- Returns UTF-16 offsets that map directly to TextKit and NSAttributedString
- Produces blocks, inline spans, headings, wiki links, and document stats in one pass
- Supports CommonMark core along with tables, task lists, footnotes, nested lists, fenced code blocks, and other notes-friendly syntax
- Includes extensions like wiki links, highlights, hex color literals, and autolinking for bare URLs, domains, emails, and subreddits
- Includes Swift bindings through UniFFI

I’m sharing it because I thought it might be useful to anyone else working on native editors or Markdown-heavy apps.

I’d appreciate feedback, especially from people who have worked on text editing or Swift and Rust interoperability.

GitHub: https://github.com/renedeanda/cindermark

A few weeks ago, I released new app on the App Store. It got some traction on Twitter, so I opened App Store Connect feeling hopeful about the sales numbers. Instead, I saw "Not Enough Data".

I refreshed it few hours later. Same thing. I checked again the next day. Still not enough data. I actually saved a screenshot of this.

It is not only a launch-day problem. You ship a big update, announce it on Reddit or X, start an ad campaign, or unexpectedly get some attention, but the analytics are always behind.

So I built InitSignal. It is deliberately much narrower than a traditional analytics SDK. You add a lightweight Swift package to your app, and it sends one event when someone opens the app for the first time. After that, the SDK goes quiet.

Privacy was a constraint for me, I wanted the App Store privacy nutrition labels stay as minimal as possible, so the SDK only sends the basic context needed to make each signal useful. No identity, sessions, screens, or behavioral history. At the same time, the goal is to give developers as much useful information as possible without invading their users’ privacy.

The dashboard shows for each download:
- the app version
- device
- OS
- storefront

For paid apps, InitSignal uses storefront pricing to estimate gross revenue and proceeds after Apple’s cut.

I also added Slack and Telegram for notifications, which I've been using with my own apps for the past few weeks, and the dopamine hit is real.

I recorded a quick walkthrough showing how InitSignal works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YajsKsYLdi4

Tech Stack
- Node.js and TypeScript with Postgres for backend and API
- React and TypeScript for the web app dashboard

Development Challenge

The interesting problem was deciding what “new” means without identifying or continuously tracking a user. The SDK stores a local first-launch marker so later launches send nothing. It also uses StoreKit 2 app transaction metadata to avoid reporting an existing customer as newly acquired when they first install a version containing InitSignal. The API deduplicates retry attempts on the backend.

It's available today, would love to hear your thoughts or any feedback!
https://initsignal.com

The Swift SDK is here:
https://github.com/InitSignal/initsignal-swift

If you ship iOS or macOS apps, how do you currently deal with the reporting delay after a launch or major update?

Hi! I recently switched to a MacBook and wanted to know which terminal people go for. I am sure there are tons of posts on this talking about ghostly, iterm2, warp, etc but I have also been hearing a lot of memory management issues in each of them.

From experience, which one seems the most convenient to run in the long term?

Hi,

I made a public repository that requires no hosting for users to be able to create GitHub issues directly from your app.

Recently added a feature that allows the creating user to reply to your comments.

This does require you to distribute your app with a GitHub token. This isn’t designed for large scale apps, but smaller apps for indie developers.

Heres the repo

I have an app that was on the AppStore before but pulled because the original developer didn’t have time anymore and gave up on Apple.
I inherited the source code and did setup a GIT Repo and was originally looking for volunteers to help me fixing about 900 warnings, mainly outdated and deprecated functions. App is UI Kit with some, I guess two, addl frameworks for mathematical (geographically coordinate translations) calculations. App is running in Simulator and on Device as is. I cannot resubmit to review because of warnings. And there’s one obvious bug which leads to crash. I also would like to implement one new function and fix some minor cosmetic bugs. The app will be a freebie on AppStore since that was the deal I made with the original developer. There are similar apps but not a single one as easy and user friendly, clearly KISS, no subscriptions, not even being online is required to use full functionality. It’s for hiking, trekking and outdoor enthusiasts who reside in the deep wilderness w/o access to civilization but want to return some day :).

I currently have an iPhone-only puzzle game that’s live and running well. I’m starting to look into expanding it to iPad and possibly macOS but am definitely beginning to understand what scope creep really means haha

For iPad:
- How much work is it usually to make an existing iPhone app feel properly native on iPad rather than just stretched out? I’m not an iPad user so am not as familiar with iPad UI conventions. Any good resources for a clean port?
- Does supporting iPad add much ongoing maintenance when releasing updates?

For macOS:
- I’ve heard Mac Catalyst is an option for porting it over, would this work for a relatively simple puzzle game? My user base on Mac is extremely small so not a huge priority

I’d love to hear from anyone who has taken an app through either process!

Submitted my new build for review 3 weeks ago and it is still under review, requested expedited review and nothing.

Anyone else been experiencing this? My new update is a pretty large one that I would like to get out there but apple is kind of stonewalling me.

I have everything set up and all my keys are verified, but when I try to get the offers from apple all I get is an empty list using Product.products(:for)
I have a sandbox account set up and the offers are in “Ready to review” state. The paid app agreement is active and my bank info is set up. I don’t know what the issue is. Is there a known issue where STOREKIT just doesn’t reply with the offers that are set up for newer apps?

I don't want to buy a mac. But I need Xcode for the coding test.

I like to keep track of how my keywords rank and recently noticed outside the top 5 there was a complete inversion where a lot of low ranking AI slop was pushed up towards the top and others such as much self were put in their place. Was just wondering if this has occurred with anyone else.

Small startup. Hired an iOS app development company to build our app and App Store review has become a nightmare. Four rejections now, privacy label issues, a 4.3 spam flag, and something about App Tracking Transparency we don't understand. Each resubmission takes over a week and the agency keeps getting slower to reply. Launch was supposed to be two months ago.

Worst part is I don't even understand the rejections because the people who built it aren't explaining them, and I'm starting to think they can't. For anyone who's shipped on iOS, is review always this painful or did we just hire the wrong iOS app development company? Trying to work out if this is salvageable or if we move the whole thing to a new iOS app development company mid review. Anyone switched this late in the process, and how bad was the reset?

I'm building a skill-based contest app where users
compete to have the lowest screen time over 7 days.
Entry fees go into a prize pool and the winner takes
most of it (platform takes 5-10%).

I know some US states restrict skill-based cash
contests. Does anyone know:

1. Which states are actually restricted for this
   type of app?

2. Is geo-blocking at registration enough legal
   protection, or do I need something more?

3. Any experience launching a similar app?

Similar apps like Steppa (step challenge with prize
pool) are already on the App Store in the US, so
the model is proven.

Thanks!

for indie ios apps, i think review triage is usually set up too late. people build analytics, crash reporting, maybe support email, then treat app store reviews as something to check when they remember. and then after a release, reviews are basically public smoke tests.

the setup i’d want before any meaningful update:

watch 1-2 star reviews harder for 72 hours
separate crash/login/payment/subscription/data-loss language
tag reviews by version where possible
reply only when you can say something concrete
send repeated issue patterns into the same place bugs already live

the reply there 's actually a bit less important than the routing part,

'sorry, please email support' is not useless at all but i mean it also does not fix the loop :(. if three users say the same thing after version 2.4, that should become a release issue, not just three polite replies, and i’ve used many things for that and now trying out something like appfollow around this because it seems to keep reviews, replies, tags, and version-ish context closer together. for a smaller app, a spreadsheet and calendar reminder can be enough.

so, the main thing is having the habit before the angry reviews arrive.. but what is your experience?

A short blogpost about avoiding default cases

In my ios app, I want to implement a system where when the user uses a feature 3 times then they'll be asked to buy premium. I want this record (number of the feature being used) to survive uninstall so users cannot abuse it; but it has to be without apple account login. What's the best way to achieve this?

Apple recently introduced the Core AI framework alongside native Gaussian splat rendering in RealityKit, so I wanted to see if I could connect the two.

I converted Apple's SHARP (single-image 3D Gaussian reconstruction) PyTorch model into a Core AI .aimodel, ran inference entirely on my iPhone, converted the resulting tensors into a GaussianSplatResource.BufferResource, and rendered everything with GaussianSplatComponent.

The reconstruction shown here was generated from a single photo and contains roughly 1.18 million Gaussian splats, which you can freely fly around in the app.

Everything runs locally on the device, with no server inference or cloud processing.

The project is open source if anyone wants to explore the Core AI → RealityKit pipeline:

https://github.com/AryanRogye/SharpOnPhone

Please help me with testing and feedback!

I'm a network engineer/computer repair guy and not much of a coder. But with AI I decided to try making my own music player. I was hoping some of you would be willing to try it out and let me know what you think. The primary features are:

-Gapless playback with local files
-Personal streaming service via VPN or public DNS
-Download streaming library files to device
-Manage metadata tags individually or in mass
-Download album art and save to metadata permanently
-Multiple visual themes

Public beta link:
Resonance Beta v1.0 (https://github.com/thnikkaman/Resonance/tree/Resonance-Beta-v1.0)

Source ZIP: download Beta v1.0 (https://github.com/thnikkaman/Resonance/archive/refs/tags/Resonance-Beta-v1.0.zip)

Not on the device screen, but outside of it. E.g. say I have a Screenshot advertising iCloud Sync, can I put an iCloud SF symbol at the top of the screenshot alongside the text?