Having had the pleasure of shipping stuff in the Apple store, I can say that the review process is tremendously inconsistent.
In one case, we submitted two white-label apps which varied only in the logo and color palette. One was approved immediately, and the other required about 6 weeks of back and forth. About 3 of those weeks were convincing the reviewer that the link to a web page with terms of use was not a link to an out of app purchase flow (app was only for internal employees of a company and had ZERO purchase mechanism since all accounts had to be pre-provisioned).
For another app, which had been in the app store for a couple years, every other submission would get rejected for some random reason or another.
I’m not sure if this was the reason it was approved but it’s possible the developer of the app presented one set of features to the reviewers, and then once approved, turned on a different set of features for its users. This can be done by returning a server side Boolean value to indicate which feature(s) to show and can be done after the app is on the App Store.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 31.5 ms ] threadIn one case, we submitted two white-label apps which varied only in the logo and color palette. One was approved immediately, and the other required about 6 weeks of back and forth. About 3 of those weeks were convincing the reviewer that the link to a web page with terms of use was not a link to an out of app purchase flow (app was only for internal employees of a company and had ZERO purchase mechanism since all accounts had to be pre-provisioned).
For another app, which had been in the app store for a couple years, every other submission would get rejected for some random reason or another.
It's just crazy to me that Apple has the ability to stop companies using their own devices.
Honestly, we would have just submitted it as a different app until it was approved.