Saturday, 8 August 2026
Yesterday I published an article titled “App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours”. I person retracted it. Its premise was truthful fundamentally incorrect that there’s nary constituent simply correcting aliases editing it. Even the title, arsenic I explicate below, was inaccurate. Although the original is now retracted, I’m not memory-holing it. The matter of the original communicative is available, for transparency and accountability, in plain text (Markdown, natch) and PDF (preserving original presentation). Both of those versions see a preface astatine the apical linking to this retraction. The URL for the original communicative now redirects to this 1 that you are presently reading.
To the champion of my recollection, this is the first station I’ve retracted successful the 24 years I’ve been penning Daring Fireball. I dream it’s the last. I was misled, some overtly and done omissions, successful respective ways, but what I people is my responsibility, and I apologize for the error.
Terry Godier first came to my attraction successful February, erstwhile I linked to his fantabulous interactive effort connected RSS provender scholar design, “Phantom Obligation”, which effort introduced Current, Godier’s caller RSS scholar that he made to exemplify the ideas from his essay. Current is, deservedly, a spot of a breakout hit. (E.g., David Pierce, astatine The Verge, put it connected a very short list of iOS-exclusive indie apps that support him from switching to Android.) In March I linked to another interactive effort from Godier, “The Last Quiet Thing”, and again in April to a post regarding the App Store’s 5-star reappraisal system. I struck up an iMessage correspondence pinch Godier astir erstwhile I first linked to his work.
Yesterday Godier posted “Browsers Have Standards, the App Store Has Judgment”. As primitively published, that station contained these 2 paragraphs:
A while agone I tried to taxable an iOS app for Dark Hours, my astronomy website for normal people. It was rejected connected the grounds that it was astrology.
It has nary tarot function, nary horoscopes, and thing that I, or anyone other I’ve asked, would subordinate pinch astrology.
Those paragraphs, astatine this penning (August 8, 11:00 p.m. ET), person been deleted and replaced by this:
Note: the original type of this station had a conception present astir an astronomy app I americium moving connected that began arsenic an astrology app and was rejected aft having the astrology contented removed. App shop [sic] review reached retired to maine and fto maine cognize that they had apparently never been fixed the updated build and that the app should beryllium fine to taxable now.
You tin now spot the problem that has led maine to afloat retract my original post, fixed that my station was wholly predicated connected the premise that Godier’s original explanation of the rejected app was true — that the app “has nary tarot function, nary horoscopes, and thing that I, aliases anyone other I’ve asked, would subordinate pinch astrology.” The truth is, the app, arsenic primitively submitted by Godier to the App Store (under the sanction “Asterly”, not “Dark Hours”), was wholly dedicated to astrology, not astronomy, and did successful truth see a “Tarot paper of the day” characteristic amongst different occultist horseshit.
The grounds of Apple’s original App Store rejection of the app, and the rejection’s upholding by the App Review Board, were correct.1 I wrongly took Godier astatine his word, some successful his nationalist blog station and successful backstage iMessage correspondence yesterday, that the rejection wasn’t conscionable simply debatable, but wholly and alternatively preposterously ungrounded. Whether Godier ever submitted a build of “Asterly” to the App Store that contained nary occult horseshit and only the hard-science astronomy features that were coming successful his “Dark Hours” website that was disposable for the past week, I don’t know. But I person nary logic to judge that he did.
My disdain for astrology is truthful utter, and my esteem for Godier’s erstwhile activity truthful high, that it simply ne'er occurred to maine that he mightiness person really made and submitted to the App Store an astrology app, fto unsocial that he’d past feign astonishment and vexation that an astrology app was rejected for being an astrology app. I showed him a draught of my station earlier publication, to make judge I had the communicative straight, and he offered not a connection of caution, only gratitude for my drafting attraction to the matter.
It gets messier. Godier’s astrology app that he submitted to the App Store backmost successful January was named “Asterly”. That was still the sanction erstwhile the App Review Board upheld its rejection successful April. According to Godier, disappointment by the App Store’s rejection, he ported the astronomy type to the web, launching it past week nether the sanction “Dark Hours” astatine the domain darkhours.io. (This is why is was incorrect for me, successful the very title of my post, to declare that Apple had rejected an app named “Dark Hours”. They rejected an app named “Asterly” and had ne'er seen an app from Godier named “Dark Hours”.) Yesterday, aft I linked to Godier’s station and Hacker News past linked to my post, Godier’s “Dark Hours” (with a space) came to the attention (and justifiable surprise) of Miguel Beher, creator of an open-source “astrophotography and dark-sky planner” task named DarkHours (no space). Beher’s GitHub project contains the root code, and the existent web app is freely disposable astatine the domain darkhours.app. In an uncomfortable speech betwixt Beher and Godier connected Bluesky, Beher pointed retired that Godier’s Dark Hours had the aforesaid bug arsenic Beher’s that routed group to “random fields successful Mexico”. Earlier today, Godier took his web app down and redirected his darkhours.io domain to Beher’s darkhours.app.
At the extremity of my now-retracted station yesterday, assuming I had righteously and rightly skewered Apple for an egregiously erroneous App Store reappraisal rejection, I wrote:
Mistakes happen. But successful a functioning strategy mistakes get corrected, and mistakes arsenic evident arsenic this 1 get corrected almost instantly and see a speedy apology for the conflation.
Obviously it was I who was mistaken. This article is my correction, and I apologize to all who publication and believed my now-retracted post, and to the reviewers astatine the App Store whose competence (if not literacy) I besmirched. Sorry astir that. Won’t hap again.
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