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'Convertbot' App Update Rejected Over Too-Similar Time Icon

Friday August 28, 2009 6:48 am PDT by Marianne Schultz
An update to Convertbot, a popular conversion app by Tapbots, was rejected by Apple because of an icon that was thought to be too similar to another one already used in the standard iPhone interface, according to the Tapbots blog.


Image courtesy of Tapbots.com

Convertbot offers a time conversion feature and the icon that represents it, which has been the same in all versions of Convertbot since it was initially released, was flagged by Apple:

Convertbot 1.4 was rejected because our icon for Time is too similar to one of Apple's default resource icons for History/Recent. They say users might get confused that our Time category might mean History or Recent. Now I might be able to understand if this happened when we first submitted Convertbot, but there have been multiple releases already so why is this a show-stopper now?


In order for the update to be approved, the icon must be re-designed. However, Apple has not provided any guidelines on what will be an acceptable re-design.

Convertbot costs $.99 and can be found here (link opens iTunes).
[ 85 comments ]

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zombitronic
Posted: 36 months ago
Fair enough. It is pretty much the exact same icon.

They should just move the hands and put a little knob on top like a stopwatch.
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ventro
Posted: 36 months ago
Ridiculous. As if Apple somehow has ownership over that time icon. However, the hourglass icon as proposed in the comments would work. But still, this is such a perversion of what the App Store was founded upon.
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Small White Car
Posted: 36 months ago
I'm torn.

On the one hand this seems like a really, minor, stupid thing for Apple to complain about.

On the other hand, they're using an icon from the phone app to represent something different than it means in the phone. I kind of understand why that's bad.

I guess, I understand Apple's reason, it's just terrible that they let it go for so long. THAT's the dumb part, I guess. The fact that it was ok before but isn't now.
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Fuchal
Posted: 36 months ago
The real question is how does a clock really represent recent calls or history? :rolleyes:

Makes more sense being used in Convertbot
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ArtOfWarfare
Posted: 36 months ago
Somehow they seem to think that just because Apple let it slip by in previous versions, they should still let it slip by.

Honestly, this is like saying "Our old version sometimes crashed but Apple never caught it in the review process so they approved it. This version crashes just as much but by our bad luck (or loss of good luck,) Apple caught it this time around so it was rejected."

I'd say an hourglass makes sense for a new icon.

... and to be honest, it is a little ridiculous on Apple's part.
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mavis
Posted: 36 months ago

The real question is how does a clock really represent recent calls or history? :rolleyes:

Makes more sense being used in Convertbot

Exactly.

This is starting to get absurd (all of these silly rejections, I mean) ... I just hope Apple's poor management of the App Store continues to drive developers to Cydia.
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Buschmaster
Posted: 36 months ago

The real question is how does a clock really represent recent calls or history? :rolleyes:

Makes more sense being used in Convertbot

You don't understand how a clock can be related to events that happened in recent history?
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jessica.
Posted: 36 months ago

You don't understand how a clock can be related to events that happened in recent history?


I believe he does and he believes it should be in the app that was rejected (or the update) not "recent calls".

Just change the icon a bit and resubmit. It is too great of an app not to have.
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ArtOfWarfare
Posted: 36 months ago

The real question is how does a clock really represent recent calls or history? :rolleyes:

Makes more sense being used in Convertbot


I'd love to hear your suggestion for a simple icon that represents history.

Honestly, I've never seen any other icon used to represent history. It's used in Safari. It's used in Firefox (granted, the icon in Firefox depicts the time as being 4:00 rather than 3:00.)

Do you really have a better suggestion or are you just trying to whine about how Apple is doing everything wrong? Maybe you'd rather swap to some other phone then?
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BeyondtheTech
Posted: 36 months ago
Perhaps if the depicted time of 3 o'clock was changed to say, 4:45?
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