David Heinemeier Hansson

Apple rejected the HEY Calendar app from their App Store, causing a delay in its launch. The rejection was based on the app not doing anything, despite other high-profile apps also requiring preexisting accounts. HEY fought a similar battle with Apple in 2020 and secured a carve-out for email services. Apple's inconsistency and monopolistic behavior in their app approval process is criticized, with hopes that competition authorities and potential legal action will bring change.

Apple rejects the HEY Calendar from their App Store

<p>Im surprised at how few companies / developers don’t skip the whole issue and just release a PWA. It’s possible that certain aspects of the application could be more powerful when operating as an official apple app rather than an installed web version. But I can’t think of many ways that this would be worth the risk and trouble. Im surprised in this case that HEY! is not simply abandoning the Apple Store BS and releasing these apps as PWAs. Always rooting for the 37Signals guys, but I feel like in some cases we would be more successful at defeating the gatekeepers if we were to go around them completely rather than trying to ‘carve out’ a hole into their silly terms repeatedly.</p>
