Inside the Apple team that decides which apps get on iPhones

“Apple Inc’s former head of App Store approval said he’s worried about competition between the company and developers, and even recalled board member Al Gore asking about a controversial app approval,” Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg. “Phillip Shoemaker, who ran app reviews from 2009 to 2016, made the comments in the latest episode of Bloomberg’s Decrypted podcast ahead of Apple’s annual developers conference in early June. He also opened up about the personal toll of being the App Stores regulator.”
“Before a developer can sell an app on the App Store, it must be approved by Apple’s app review team,” Gurman reports. “There are over 2 million apps on the store, but many have been rejected since it opened in 2008.”
“‘In the early days, Apple had three reviewers look at each app. That led to long review times, which eventually decreased after the process shifted to one set of eyes,’ he said,” Gurman reports. “‘Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing who oversees the App Store, pushed for humans to review all apps, rather than just automated tools, to limit improper or buggy apps,’ Shoemaker said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a tough job, and an imperfect science, but we much prefer human curation to some automated system.