And that is how you handle things like this. He ponied up and took the hit. More importantly, he gave the back story. After years of reading so many circular psuedo-responsibility posts (by others) trying to squirm out of awkward situations, it's refreshing to see his thoroughness.
This is the right way to handle the situation like that, and kudos to the author for writing the second post.
This is also a reminder that people lie or just hide some part of the story all the time, and we as readers should question every story if it only presents an opinion of one side, and not the other's.
That being said, hearing Apple's own opinion is probably not what we could reasonably expect.
I have not that many things in life that I try to live by.
One is that when presented with contradictory evidence, evaluate it honestly and, if you evaluate it to be correct, in full or in part, change your belief freely and without apology.
The other is when you decide you have made a mistake, say so plainly and openly.
They often go together, but not always. I can’t speak to the author’s belief, but I will file this article under Epistles from Gruber to the internet because it is an inspiration to me.
> Note: the original version of this post had a section here about an astronomy app I am working on that began as an astrology app and was rejected after having the astrology content removed. App store [sic] review reached out to me and let me know that they had apparently never been given the updated build and that the app should be fine to submit now.
So did the submitter submit the updated build, but it somehow never made it through Apple's process and thus was never looked at by the app store reviewer? Because that's also a bad look for Apple of "we rejected your app by mistake because we looked at the wrong version, not the new one you submitted".
> In an uncomfortable exchange between Beher and Godier on Bluesky, Beher pointed out that Godier’s Dark Hours had the same bug as Beher’s that routed people to “random fields in Mexico”.
Stealing an open source repo and launching it as your own app is a brazen move. Launching it with the same name as the original repo is just flagrant.
This guy thought he was going to ride this controversy to some free publicity for himself, using other people’s work. He flew too close to the sun and got caught out on every level.
I suspected this was the case from the very beginning. Some years ago, there was another developer who cried foul and the tech press picked up and ran the story that he was unfairly kicked off the App Store. His entire developer account kicked and banned.
Developers and the press were equally outraged. Yet another reason that App Store was bad. Or so we all thought.
Turns out, after all the bad press for Apple, and with multiple instances where Apple helped to resolve his issue, he quietly admitted online (after weeks of controversy) that he shared his developer account with a relative who was making scam apps and doing bad stuff.
It escalated all the way to the top and Phil Schiller at Apple personally looked at the matter and confirmed that his account was indeed committing scams and bad stuff.
Bogdan Popescu.
For this fake and manufactured controversy, turns out that Terry Godier is a liar and a thief.
Why is astrology banned on the app store? If people want to believe in BS let them. Weird to police this but not say, any of the apps related to creationism.
Wait, are we all treating "astrology is banned on app store" as an obvious fact of life? Did I miss some culture war? Are religion-focused apps also banned?
EDIT Thank you all, I'll now go search for something else to be triggered by.
24 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] threadThis is also a reminder that people lie or just hide some part of the story all the time, and we as readers should question every story if it only presents an opinion of one side, and not the other's.
That being said, hearing Apple's own opinion is probably not what we could reasonably expect.
One is that when presented with contradictory evidence, evaluate it honestly and, if you evaluate it to be correct, in full or in part, change your belief freely and without apology.
The other is when you decide you have made a mistake, say so plainly and openly.
They often go together, but not always. I can’t speak to the author’s belief, but I will file this article under Epistles from Gruber to the internet because it is an inspiration to me.
Is there astrology in this app? No. Was there..? Yes. And the person complaining skipped mentioning that detail about their app
> Note: the original version of this post had a section here about an astronomy app I am working on that began as an astrology app and was rejected after having the astrology content removed. App store [sic] review reached out to me and let me know that they had apparently never been given the updated build and that the app should be fine to submit now.
So did the submitter submit the updated build, but it somehow never made it through Apple's process and thus was never looked at by the app store reviewer? Because that's also a bad look for Apple of "we rejected your app by mistake because we looked at the wrong version, not the new one you submitted".
https://flintstones.fandom.com/wiki/Wiggy_Rockstone
Stealing an open source repo and launching it as your own app is a brazen move. Launching it with the same name as the original repo is just flagrant.
This guy thought he was going to ride this controversy to some free publicity for himself, using other people’s work. He flew too close to the sun and got caught out on every level.
There's no mention of or apology for how Godier deceived Gruber and the world about the astronomy/astrology App Store submission/rejection.
https://blog.terrygodier.com/2026/08/09/mea-culpa-dark-hours...
Developers and the press were equally outraged. Yet another reason that App Store was bad. Or so we all thought.
Turns out, after all the bad press for Apple, and with multiple instances where Apple helped to resolve his issue, he quietly admitted online (after weeks of controversy) that he shared his developer account with a relative who was making scam apps and doing bad stuff.
It escalated all the way to the top and Phil Schiller at Apple personally looked at the matter and confirmed that his account was indeed committing scams and bad stuff.
Bogdan Popescu.
For this fake and manufactured controversy, turns out that Terry Godier is a liar and a thief.
EDIT Thank you all, I'll now go search for something else to be triggered by.