WOW. Great Article Van.
**** you be English Professor, I had to look up a few words and their meaning
All good now . . .
Mate I really do sympathise for you.
Im surprised that the specifically came back to you and said you can't reference another App that has a small audience in your counter claim. It feels as if they are trying to save them from double standards, and then having to explain themselves why 'x' App is allowed in, and your not.
What gets me, is there are Apps out there (knowing the Developer helps in this statement), that in 2 yrs on the App store, has only had 780 downloads, tells me, that, that isn't a App with a big audience, and not worthy of being on the App Store, and to top it off it was free as well.
Knowing this, and recalling our rejection notice, you have to ask yourself, what categorises it as a App not with a big Audience ? I dare say, because of what it was, you had it as a Free App ?? Yes ?? So why would they ban it at all. As you stated, Apple are big on the Education side of things, so why refrain people using it at all ??
I myself have had my first App rejected too. But their decision for me, was it was a copy cat of a App (namely Flappy Bird) and wasn't playable, and was too hard to advance in the game to make it a enjoyable game for people to play. (but in their by the book wording)
Granted, it was a Flappy Bird Re-Skinned, but still a lot of my own code, and it had different graphics, too. Instead of Flappy Bird, I had a Semi Trailer truck on a road, and the pipes where changed to Barriers, but because I had a trailer on it, it was difficult to get through the barriers unscathed.
I had a lot more work to do on it, as you could of been ¾ pixels off the barrier and it would mark it as a crash, and because I didn't have the barriers at a wider pre-defined distance, to get the truck through, and trailer, was very hard to do. You could get the Prime Mover through, but because of the trailing trailer, it cut corners, and I didn't know how to get that to follow the line of the Truck and not cut a corner when I turned the truck left or right.
I used Portrait mode as well, so in my eyes, it was far enough away from Flappy Birds (so I thought) to get past the Copy Cat, requirement. Heck, there are hundreds of Flappy Bird clones out there now, so you just have to wonder sometimes.
Was I disappointed ?? Yea. It would of been nice to have a App on the App Store to call my own, but I learnt a lot from the process. Will I try again with it ?? Probably not. I might wait until o know a little more and change the ways its played from touch, to movement, but then I will have to change it to play in Landscape, so maybe not. . . I am already working on "The Next Big Thing" but with iOS 8 and Swift, it like I need to relearn it all over again.
I see Swift easier than Obj-C, but I need to be more proficient with Obj-C first before trying to learn something new . . . .
Still nice write up, and its good to see it from someone that has experience in both markets, and platforms. Maybe I should rework it for the Google Play Store ?? I got no idea where to start though lol