Emoticons And Other Special Characters Banned From App Store

 

Apple’s iTunes marketing requirements are being updated from time to time. Actually what the company wants to achieve by this is to provide the most accurate descriptions for the services they provide: mobile apps, songs, movies, TV shows and any other available content available for downloading on iTunes.

What has Apple done recently is the displacement of the app descriptions that contain emoticons, such as:  exclamation marks, stars, smileys and other special characters. The info was made public through the iTunes Connect web portal, the portal where the iOS developers  upload their submission and iTunes marketing materials. Mike Campbell confirms for the AppleInsider that any special character including emoticons is subject of rejection for the company. So, actually what Apple is suggesting is that they are no longer allow developers to submit app descriptions which have unique characters, symbols and speech bubble in their description. What programmers should do is use standard text for the updates and restrain from using non-standard characters.

The publication confirmed, right after questioning two developers that 19th of April is the date of the implementation of Apple’s new iconography requirements. So, special characters may have blacklisted, but the information is not yet confirmed.

Other changes include the App Store screenshots that can only be changed after submitting a binary for an app update. This was implemented as there were some scam tactics which actually transformed the  just-approved screenshots with images from different applications. Apple is not so fond of screenshots – touched-up ones.

Instead of a conclusion, we must say that Apple is continuing to allow  app screens with huge captions emblazoned on them. In other words, the marketing that is intrusive and not professional, which, compared to Google Play Store for instance is more present here.

What about you? Is there anything that bothers you in the App Store on this issue of emoticons?

Share with us in the comments section below.

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