Apple’s Changes in Policies on Notification Centre Widgets

Apple seems to have ordered another developer to make changes in its nebulous policies on Notification Centre widgets, informing Drafts developer Agile Tortoise that the app’s widget is not permitted to be used in creating drafts or opening the Drafts app.

Developer Greg Pierce in his tweet stated that he has been asked to re-submit Draft without functionality for opening the app or creating a new one, which essentially removes all the features of the Notification Centre Widget. Earlier the indecisiveness of the company for widgets led to an app known as `Launcher being pulled from sale’, with a similar fate met by the popular pCalc widget till Apple changed it. The widget on focus today was created by Pierce which is part of the popular note taking app `Draft’, enabling users to create new entries in the app.

This is done by pressing a button in the widget that opens the app’s composer. The introduction of Drafts 4 in October is an update to the existing Draft app presently and helps users to post a variety of social networks as well as perform various actions with notes such as the creating of emails, messages, calendar event and much more.

Drafts Faced Confusing Restrictions and Rules

The Draft app widget like other several apps having Notification Centre app permits users to open the app directly creating new draft or draft from the clipboard. In fact it has very little function in the Notification Centre besides opening up the Drafts app which earlier was like an acceptable use of the Notification Centre.

Pierce states that he was told that the present view in the Notification Centre is `for information presentation only’, which could be a point of view in ruling out the almost all Notification Center apps and he draws the attention that there are many similar apps which offer the same widget function as Drafts, like the Evernote which enables users to launch the Evernote app together with new notes besides other content within the Notification Center.

Draft is one of the numbers of apps,which has come across confusing restrictions and rules that were delivered by the review team of Apple’s app. Apple had told pCalc developers in October that calculator functions were not allowed in the Notification Center before a change in decision a few weeks ago, informing Neato to remove the note taking functions from its Notification Center widget.

Apple’s App Extensive Guidelines

The Extension Guidelines of Apple’s App recommends that the Notification Widgets should have a `simple streamlined UI’ with `limited number of interactive items’, though the vague language could lead the developers in spending time and effort in the creation of a variety of useful functions which are eventually not permitted since Apple seems to refine how it needs the Notification Center to be used.

It is not known why Drafts has been removed out by Apple’s app review team since it offer similar functions as other widgets. However if the Draft widget is singled out, there is a possibility that several other similar widgets would be in danger of getting into violation of the Notification Center widget rules.