Summary: Apple will be removing the restriction that blocks use of other people's SDKs for App development (i.e. Adobe Flash). Apple will be publishing more information about the approval process, to help make it less opaque and arbitrary. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/09/apple-relaxing-app-development-process-posting-review-guidelines/1
Saw this text version of the review guidelines: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=umB5Pi87 The rules stated are refreshingly blunt - I was expecting to see a thousand pages of legalese.
Yes it's a good document to read. This bit made me chuckle: 14. Personal attacks 14.1 Any app that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harms way will be rejected 14.2 Professional political satirists and humorists are exempt from the ban on offensive or mean- spirited commentary Are there any professional political satirists who are also C/C++/ObjC developers out there that would like to comment?
Assuming it's legit (and it appears to be), I'm surprised how subjective many of the criteria are. There are huge numbers of already-approved apps that could be rejected according to these rules. I guess that's why there's a review board that can be petitioned.
Here's the incident that prompted this exception: http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/04/mark-fiore-can-win-a-pulitzer-prize-but-he-cant-get-his-iphone-cartoon-app-past-apples-satire-police/
