Unsavery

You may be familiar with SnowSaver and RedPill, two popular Mac screensavers I wrote.

I recently signed up as a Mac developer, with the intention of making my screensavers available on the App Store.

After some technical hurdles, I submitted my first screensaver, and it was rejected on the grounds that it didn’t provide enough functionality to be worthy of the App Store, because it was just a screensaver.

I appealed the rejection, pointing out that there are already screensavers on the App Store. I got to speak to someone at Apple, who told me that the appeal board’s final decision is that the rejection stands. So going forward, no screensavers will be allowed on the App Store.

I post this information in the hope that it will save other people from wasting their time and/or money. Since the policy had invalidated my only reason for signing up, in my case Apple made an exception, canceled my developer account at my request, and refunded the membership fee.

Obviously it’s up to Apple what criteria they want to set for entry in the Mac App Store, as (for the moment at least) there are plenty of other places to distribute Mac software. I can’t help but be disappointed, though. I plan to focus my spare time programming back towards open source projects and Android.