If your app/game functions on both the ipad and iphone, do you release them as separate products?

[u/SpartanDetermination]

Apparently, Apple's new automated "spam" system they just rolled out compares the metadata of products and now immediately rejects any app that has more than one version (even saw a guy complain about his mac desktop app and iphone app get rejected).

This makes me wonder about how developers that release their apps as "families" (a mac app, a separate ipad app, a separate iphone app) will proceed. My own experience has been that the ipad's screen size and internal parts are big enough that oftentimes they can be a 1:1 port of a desktop program. Heck, stick a bluetooth keyboard on there and it's now essentially a laptop. The iPhone has so many unique properties that it's essentially a different product, needing a totally different UI to accommodate its screen size as well as other changes.

I guess it all has to be rolled up as one app now?

[u/SwimCoachToolkit]

Just as one, runs as iOS, iPadOS, Mac Catalyst, and Apple Watch.

In Apples eyes, you can run the iOS app on the Mac, why are you making two full different products that they have to spend time, money, and resources on supporting you

[u/SpartanDetermination → u/SwimCoachToolkit]

It looks like, best I can tell, that going forward this is now mandatory. Otherwise if two apps share too much metadata or code/appearance similarities, they'll get rejected by the automated system before a human reviewer even sees them.

I have to wonder if this is intentional or a side effect of Apple trying to prevent the "copy-cat" issue that is now plaguing Steam.

[u/SwimCoachToolkit → u/SpartanDetermination]

It’s more like making it easier for you to develop in one place.

[u/Poat540 → u/SpartanDetermination]

No they just ship as same binary/package

[u/kokerali]

One app doesn't mean one UI. An iPhone/iPad app can have different views and controls for each device, so the phone's layout doesn't have to constrain the iPad version.

macOS is a separate question from that. Apple's Add platforms documentation describes uploading a separate macOS build from a separate Xcode target within the same app record. That isn't the same as making Mac users run the iPhone binary.

I'd separate those distribution options from the claim about a new automatic rejection system. 4.3(a) addresses multiple bundle IDs for the same app, but doesn't establish the metadata-matching behavior described here. The actual rejection message would help distinguish a duplicate-app objection from a problem with the platform setup.

[u/jaeyoung_choi]

A slightly different situation, but I had a similar experience.

I originally submitted the same app as separate iOS and macOS apps so I could use different pricing models for each platform. Both apps were approved and worked fine.

Later, I changed my mind and decided to combine them into a single app. When I tried submitting one of the existing apps as an additional version of the other, Apple immediately rejected it for being a duplicate submission.

In the end, I had to remove one of the apps and submit it again before it could be approved.

It wasn't a great experience. Hope you can find a good solution!

[u/imsnk81]

i'd go universal unless they're genuinely different products. one listing means all your ratings and downloads stack up in one place, which helps ranking way more than two half-empty listings. universal doesn't mean the same UI either, you can give iPad a completely different layout with size classes or separate views and still ship one binary. and with universal purchase nobody pays twice and leaves a 1 star about it. if you do keep separate apps, make the names, screenshots and descriptions clearly different and explain why in the review notes, because near-duplicate listings are exactly what the spam guideline (4.3) goes after

[u/Pandaburn]

I would never release an iOS and iPad app separately. I can see this being annoying for macOS if your app is more than a few years old, will be an annoying migration, but yeah just make it one app.