App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours
本周 App Store 拒审案例：Dark Hours
Terry Godier, “Browsers Have Standards, the App Store Has Judgment”: A while ago I tried to submit an iOS app for Dark Hours, my astronomy website for normal people. It was rejected on the grounds that it was astrology. It has no tarot function, no horoscopes, and nothing that I, or anyone else I’ve asked, would associate with astrology.
Terry Godier 在《浏览器有标准，App Store 有“审判”》一文中写道：前段时间，我尝试为我的天文网站“Dark Hours”（面向普通大众的天文科普网站）提交了一款 iOS 应用。结果它被拒审了，理由是它属于“占星术”。该应用没有任何塔罗牌功能，也没有星座运势，没有任何我或我询问过的任何人会将其与占星术联系起来的内容。
I penned a nice little rant two years ago expressing my fury over the way that kooks promoting astrology often try to insinuate that their voodoo pseudoscience is even vaguely related to the hard science of astronomy. And it really is an unfortunate fluke of the English language that two subjects with a contentious relationship are differentiated as words by two letters. Even if you know the difference between the two, and care, if you’re reading quickly your eyes might conflate one word with the other.
两年前，我曾写过一篇言辞激烈的文章，表达了我对那些推广占星术的怪人感到愤怒——他们总是试图暗示自己的巫术伪科学与严谨的天文学有某种关联。英语中这两个关系紧张的学科在拼写上仅有两个字母之差，这确实是一个不幸的巧合。即使你了解两者的区别并且对此在意，如果阅读速度过快，你的眼睛也可能会将这两个词混淆。
But if you actually look at Godier’s Dark Hours, for even just a few seconds, it is instantly obvious that it pertains to the science of astronomy and has absolutely nothing — zero, zilch, nada — to do with astrology. So even if Apple’s App Store reviewer misread the submission’s description, and wrongly assumed it was yet another quack astrology app, if they launched it and spent just a few seconds poking around, they should have instantly recognized their incorrect assumption. But that’s not what happened. They rejected the app on the utterly incorrect grounds that it pertained to astrology.
但如果你真的去看看 Godier 的 Dark Hours，哪怕只看几秒钟，你也会立刻明白它属于天文学范畴，与占星术毫无关系——一点儿关系都没有。所以，即便苹果的 App Store 审核员误读了提交说明，错误地认为这又是另一款江湖骗术般的占星应用，只要他们打开应用并花几秒钟浏览一下，就应该立刻意识到自己的判断是错误的。但事实并非如此。他们以该应用属于占星术这一完全错误的理由拒绝了它。
If this was an honest mistake from a reasonable judicial board, you’d expect the interaction with Godier, the developer, to have gone something like this: App Review: REJECTED: Astrology. Developer: No, it’s astroNoMy not astroLoGy. App Review: Oh, sorry! Carry on, APPROVED. But that’s not what happened at all. Godier proceeded through a series of escalations up to the App Review Board and the Review Board responded that they determined the original rejection was valid because, I shit you not, “We understand that the app includes a live tarot reading feature.” Which isn’t even about astrology. It’s straight out of Kafka.
如果这是一个合理的评审机构所犯的无心之失，你可能会期待开发者 Godier 与审核方的沟通是这样的：App 审核：拒审，理由：占星术。开发者：不，这是天文学（Astronomy），不是占星术（Astrology）。App 审核：哦，抱歉！请继续，已通过。但事实完全不是这样。Godier 经过了一系列申诉，一直上报到 App 审核委员会，而委员会的回应是他们认定最初的拒审是有效的，因为——我没开玩笑——“我们了解到该应用包含实时塔罗牌占卜功能。”这甚至连占星术都不是。这简直是卡夫卡式的荒诞。
Dark Hours is not just merely unrelated to astrology (let alone tarot-card reading). It’s actually exquisitely well-designed and painstaking crafted. It’s exactly the sort of app that the App Store ought to celebrate and highlight. It doesn’t just belong in the category of astronomy apps in the App Store, it will raise the quality bar for astronomy apps in the App Store. iOS-exclusive, native Liquid Glass UI, smooth scrolling, beautiful typography and layout, and way more useful as a native mobile app than as a website.
Dark Hours 不仅仅与占星术（更不用说塔罗牌占卜）无关，它实际上设计精美、制作考究。这正是 App Store 应该赞美和重点推荐的那类应用。它不仅属于 App Store 中的天文学应用类别，甚至能提升该类别应用的质量标准。它专为 iOS 开发，拥有原生的 Liquid Glass UI、流畅的滚动效果、精美的排版和布局，作为原生移动应用，它比网站版本实用得多。
Go check out the website and I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s the sort of thing that would be even cooler as an app. But it is an app, and the app is better and more useful than the website version, and Godier has fought to get it approved. But Apple’s App Review Board said no, on fallacious easily-refuted grounds. This isn’t just contrary to the benefit of developers, like Godier. It’s obviously contrary to the benefit of Apple itself, which should not just accept an app like Dark Hours, but celebrate it as an exemplar of the platform.
去看看那个网站吧，我相信你也会同意，如果把它做成应用会更酷。事实上它确实已经是一款应用了，而且比网站版本更好、更实用，Godier 也一直在为争取通过审核而努力。但苹果的 App 审核委员会拒绝了它，理由是荒谬且极易被驳倒的。这不仅损害了像 Godier 这样的开发者的利益，显然也损害了苹果自身的利益——苹果不仅应该接受像 Dark Hours 这样的应用，更应该将其作为平台的典范加以推崇。
Mistakes happen. But in a functioning system mistakes get corrected, and mistakes as obvious as this one get corrected almost instantly and include a quick apology for the conflation. The App Store is not a functioning system.
错误在所难免。但在一个运作良好的系统中，错误会被纠正；像这样明显的错误，应该几乎在瞬间就被纠正，并附上一句关于混淆视听的简短道歉。而 App Store 显然不是一个运作良好的系统。