We are constantly bombarded by notifications daily and from different apps. The notifications range from your normal Twitter mentions to Facebook bothering you to like someone’s photo or a game reminding you that your lives are back.
Apple has been banning apps from using notifications for promotions or advertising and now they have changed that.
According to 9to5Mac, Apple has updated its App Store guidelines where now apps can send marketing information if people explicitly opted in to receive them. The same customers should also be able to opt-out of receiving the ads. This has been updated on the App Store guide liens that you can read here.
This follows a pushback some time back where Apple was accused of sending push notifications to Apple Music subscribers yet it broke one of Apple’s own App Store review guidelines.
Ok, @AppleMusic, you’ve had your notification privileges revoked. pic.twitter.com/kRqmLWvdCr
— Ben (@bbchase) February 15, 2019
This was viewed as Apple bending its own rules to push these “ads” to its platform since it controls the entire platform. The new changes will now put those qualms to rest and enable 3rd party app makers to add the ability to send these promo notifications to users.
Promo notifications are usually not fan favourites so I will expect iOS users to opt-out of them.
There were also a couple of interesting new guidelines that were added. Apple will be stricter when reviewing dating or fortune-telling apps. All new apps will be required to be built with the iOS 13 SDK starting April 30, 2020. Sign in with Apple (Apple’s new Apple ID based credential login) needs to be implemented by April 30, 2020
