Simon Willison’s Weblog

27th June 2024 - Link Blog

Python 3.12 change results in Apple App Store rejection (via) Such a frustrating demonstration of the very worst of Apple's opaque App Store review process. The Python 3.12 standard library urllib package includes the string itms-services, and after much investigation Eric Froemling managed to determine that Apple use a scanner and reject any app that has that string mentioned anywhere within their bundle.

Russell Keith-Magee has a thread on the Python forum discussing solutions. He doesn't think attempts to collaborate with Apple are likely to help:

That definitely sounds appealing as an approach - but in this case, it’s going to be screaming into the void. There’s barely even an appeals process for app rejection on Apple’s App Store. We definitely don’t have any sort of channel to raise a complaint that we could reasonably believe would result in a change of policy.