Apple Rejects Updated Apps for Police and Law Enforcement
After three years of submitting apps approved by Apple that our users liked, and having increasing sales year over year, this past Friday, December 23rd, we received a shocking message from Apple. Apple was rejecting our 2012 updates. This is despite the fact that we have been selling these same apps in the app store since 2009 and have an overall average rating of 4 stars from our users. This is especially disturbing and arbitrary given the fact that Apple is actively demoing these very same apps to law enforcement. In fact just last month we had a bulk sale of our apps to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department through Apple’s new Volume Purchase Program.
Our Company’s History With Apple
We started selling legal reference apps in the app store in 2009. We originally polled a group of lawyers to find out how many of them were using iPhones and if they would be interested in having quick access to the legal statutes on their iPhone. The news wasn’t good — the blackberry was the phone of choice among lawyers and their firms. We saw promise in the flexibility the iPhone offered and decided to pursue developing our apps. Hopefully we could help develop a market on the iPhone.
We founded our biggest success among law enforcement. They could use the fast search our apps provide to very quickly find infractions or reference the current laws. Also more and more lawyers started purchasing iPhones and using our apps. While they serve a niche market, our apps are very important to our users. Since the app store did not (and still does not) support paid upgrades we follow a business model of releasing new paid versions every year or two depending on when the majority of laws would are changed, and otherwise making free updates in between. If a user liked they could continue to use the older version on their phone. Only the new version would be available for sale in the app store.
2010 went well, and we were seeing a good increase in users as word of mouth about our apps spread. We started getting requests from law enforcement and lawyers around the country to “please add support for their state”. Then in October, 2010 things got really exciting – a request from apple to demo our software at trade shows and to police chiefs around the country:
From: Betsi L <apple.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 12:20 PM
Subject: PDA Wizard: iPad applications
To: PDA Wizard Support <pdawiz.com>I concentrate on the state/local and federal markets and show the iPad to several customers during sales calls and trade shows.
Would you be interested in sending me download codes to download your apps directly so that we may show your apps directly (at no charge)? I’ve very willing to show your applications to show our law enforcement customers all of the applications available.
I appreciate your response asap. I will be traveling the ICOP (Intl Chiefs of Police) in Orlando in 2 weeks so would appreciate your response prior to this date.
thank you
Betsi L
Govt Channel Manager
We happily provided Apple with copies of our apps, and we were getting good feedback from Apple’s sales team:
From: Ron U <apple.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: PDA Wizard: iPad applications
To: PDA Wizard Support <pdawiz.com>Hi Eli,
It went really well. I showed them your apps for the other agencies and they were interested. They’re deciding what their next steps will be, either a more in-depth followup meeting or pilots starting after the new year. They’re looking at deploying iPads to patrol officers.
Thanks.
Ron
In 2011 we released our updated apps for the New Year and things continued to increase compared to the previous two years. Sales were growing, reviews were good, our apps were showing up in the Apple’s lists of top reference apps, and more police departments were looking at making our apps available directly to their officers. Just two months ago we received a question from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department asking how they could do a bulk purchase of our apps. I contacted Betsi at Apple to find out about the process:
From: PDA Wizard Support <pdawiz.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:01 PM
Subject: Re: PDA Wizard: iPad applications
To: Betsi L <apple.com>Hi Betsi,
We just received an inquiry from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department regarding a bulk purchase of our apps. I did receive a notice from Apple in June that support for bulk purchases was coming, but I am not sure of the procedure for this or who I should contact about it. Can you give me a reference to someone that can answer questions about this and help the SBCSD through the process?
And we got this encouraging reply that apple was still demoing our software in addition to the info we needed about Apple’s Volume Purchase Program:
From: Betsi L <apple.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 7:24 PM
Subject: Re: PDA Wizard: iPad applications
To: PDA Wizard Support <pdawiz.com>Eli
good news – I hope it was because they saw us demonstrate your apps in a recent california MISAC show
Here’s the info on the VPP for Apps
http://www.apple.com/business/vpp/
attachment: VPP_Business_Guide_US.pdf
I’m happy to report that just last month they did complete the volume purchase of our apps.
Our 2012 Updates… And Spam?
Earlier this month we started releasing the 2012 versions of our New York apps. The 2012 releases of our NY Penal Law, Vehicle & Traffic Law, and Civil Practice Law & Rules were approved by Apple’s review team on Dec 8th and went on sale in the app store just like had happened for our 2009, 2010, and 2011 releases. Business as usual. But something funny happened with the rest of our 2012 releases for New York.
On Dec 13th, just 5 days after the first of our 2012 NY releases were approved, Apple notified us that the rest of our 2012 updates were being rejected. Not only were they being rejected, but they were considered spam and apple threatened to revoke our developer license:
Binary Rejected Dec 13, 2011 10:49 AM
Reasons for Rejection:
- 2.20: Developers “spamming” the App Store with many versions of similar apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program
Dec 13, 2011 10:49 AM. From Apple.
Obviously there was a mistake here. These are successful apps in the app store with great reviews from happy loyal users. Not “spam”. Many of our users would buy more than one of our apps to cover different areas of law. The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Dept purchased four different apps as part of their volume purchase. Apple’s sales team was actively demoing our apps, and we were entering our fourth year of selling these Apps in the app store.
We have had lots of requests to make our apps available on Android, but so far had kept all of our eggs in Apple’s basket. This isn’t a bizarro world. Apple wouldn’t approve our Apps for three years (2009, 2010, 2011), then approve our 2012 releases one week in December, and reject them as “spam” the following week. Especially not while Apple’s sales team is demoing our apps across the country. With Apple’s 30% cut of our sales and all the hardware being purchased to run our apps Apple is making more money off of our apps then we are. Obviously it was a mistake, so we filed an appeal of the rejection and reminded Apple of all this.
Then last Friday, December 23rd, we received a call from Richard from Apple’s “Worldwide Developer Relations” team who very nonchalantly told us that our appeal was rejected. Our apps were considered spam and the 2012 releases would not be made available to our users… To Apple’s users!
Shock! Betrayal! How could this be? It is a bizarro world!
Richard said that Apple just wanted to be “consistent”. Consistent? Consistency would be having our apps remain on sale as they have been for the past three years. Consistency is not approving our updates one week in December, then rejecting them the following week. Consistency is not having your sales team demo our apps to sell iPads to law enforcement at the same time you are threatening to remove us from the iOS Developer Program for writing them. Richard also told that “Rules change all the time”. Oh, yes, then at the end of our call Richard said “uh, have a good holiday weekend”… Thanks Richard.
If this is what Apple considers consistent, they should review Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” Apple’s inconsistent consistency runs counter to the excellent reviews we have received for these apps and is an absolute disservice to their users.
Hope For A More “Consistent” Apple
Next week we are supposed to release our 2012 California Apps. The same as we have done since 2009. We’ve been getting questions for the past few months about when our 2012 California Apps would be available, and our answer has always been “early January”. We have sold tens of thousands of copies of our apps and have a lot of loyal users waiting to buy our 2012 releases. We hope that Apple makes a New Year’s resolution to be “consistent” and releases our apps as they have in previous years. We’d hate to disappoint them!
Some of our recent reviews…