To be fair, it's closer to 4 months, and it would appear that they won't yank you immediately. It's only for new submissions:

> This requirement applies to all app submissions starting January 31, 2022.

Unsure if this means new apps, or includes updates to existing apps. But I bet there'll be a bit more of a grace period if you don't have a new update to push.

This language in the past has come to mean all submissions: new apps and those being updated.

Plus, “initiate deletion of their account from within the app” sounds like the app can simply link to whatever account deletion functionality you have on your website.

I don't think that's right, but the policy and the article doesn't answer these questions particularly well, so it's very much up to interpretation... The problem with linking to a website is that it doesn't make anything better for the user, since that could be either directing to a form, a support phone number or mail. Neither which improve the situation because the user is not in control.

if you provide a good and easy sign in functionality from your app, through native UI and the like, then you should be able to provide the same functionality for deleting that same account. That is at least what we have recommended one of our clients, but that client is also a public transport company, so they can't afford to be in gray area where the app is either rejected or taken down.

This change was noticed and discussed in June, when Apple (quietly) added a clause to the App Store guidelines. We notified our clients back then.

Details were very vague at the time and now we know when it will actually start being enforced, but overall it’s more like half a year notice.

I remember that change. I wondered at the time why people were not more concerned about what that change meant. I guess people either didn't fully apprehend the implications, or maybe they thought Apple wouldn't follow through?

Apple considers 3 months their standard level of advance notice, with WWDC serving as your warning and the release of iOS in September as the go-live date.

However, in this case, they have ended up giving you 6 months and a courtesy reminder.

If you aren’t interested in maintaining your app annually, don’t publish apps on Apple’s store.

Whether or not their level of notice is enough, they’ve been consistent for years in this practice of 3 months notice for significant and breaking changes, and they seem comfortable compelling annual updates from developers. I would not expect them to care that 3 months is difficult in your circumstances, as they assume you’re prepared to maintain your app and proactively keep up with policy changes over time. It sounds like you did not attend to this year’s policy updates and may well have been out of compliance for months now. Fortunately, they offered a grace period rather than just refusing your next bugfix update. Lucky you!

(I am not sympathetic to your situation, because as a user of apps, I am exhausted of crappy apps and bottom-of-the-barrel behaviors from developers. I understand that others may feel otherwise, and that’s fine too, just as long as those feelings do not get in the way of being a responsive app developer.)

> If you aren’t interested in maintaining your app annually, don’t publish apps on Apple’s store.

That's exactly what I do. I avoid the app stores like the plaque.

> (I am not sympathetic to your situation, because as a user of apps, I am exhausted of crappy apps and bottom-of-the-barrel behaviors from developers. I understand that others may feel otherwise, and that’s fine too, just as long as those feelings do not get in the way of being a responsive app developer.)

I think the word here is 'entitled.' There are a few different groups here:

- Bottom-of-the-barrel scammers, whom I have no sympathy to

- Little kids and amateurs, who might want to put something out and move on

- Graduate students and research projects

- Little not-for-profits

- Internal-use small businesses and enterprise apps, where a they might be developed once and forgotten about for decades (yes, plural)

In my case, I don't need to have an app on the app store, and I don't care for Apple's behavior, so I don't have an app there. That hurts Apple (and you, if you're an iPhone user) more than it does me.

You're also confusing strictness with timelines. I'm all for super-strict policies. Just with:

- Backwards compatibility (e.g. grandfathering) of older apps

- Plenty of notice

If you think requiring the ability to delete your account is "developer hostile", you're exactly why this provision needs to exist. Apple is giving you six months to stop fucking your users. Sorry not sorry :\

> You have to be crazy to stake your company on apple's goodwill at this point

My company has an app on the app store. We do a few hundred million dollars in sales via the app. Are we crazy?

If you could make an extra hundred million dollars by fucking over users, some would say you are crazy not to, yes. Opinions vary, but that's sort of the essence of it.

One man’s developer hostile is another man’s customer friendly

I feel like they should be a lot more up front and plainly spoken about the maintenance burden of publishing on the app store.

But I don't think it's particularly hostile. I think it's just that their focus on user experience requires them to accept the punishing annual cycle for developers.

You’re also responsible for supporting new hardware and responding to security problems and other bugs. If you can’t be bothered to implement a rather straightforward feature like account deletion in three months I don’t really have a problem with you being excluded from the App Store

User accounts tend to be a central part of any application that stores data somewhere, and is prone to custom logic and assumptions. From experimental todo list apps to POS management software.

I can’t imagine account deletion is straightforward for most of the implementation, even just from a legal standpoint when money changing hands is involved.

I think it’s a complicated enough issue that it should be tackled from the start (which is usually the case) and kept track of as the product/service evolves.

If you've been based in the EU or offering services to EU customers you should already have the possibility to delete accounts as that's a requirement of the GDPR, so 3 months to expose the existing functionality to the user sounds more than enough.