I've seen good advice and conversation on these forums, or at the very least developers getting confirmation of the situation where Apple are silent.
The forums, for all reasonable purposes, are dead and have been for a couple of years. These forums were originally conceived of as a place to get help with technical problems. It's unique because there are actual Apple Developer support engineers who regularly participate and can provide very useful insight, both positive and negative, to real-world developer problems.
At least, that was the idea. Then it pretty much died. These incessant App Review complaints have revived it, albeit as more of a zombie forum. Apple never replies to those App Review complaints. Very rarely, App Review itself will chime in and say the matter has been resolved and that's that.
While I've also seen a couple of helpful answers from yourself, I've also seen you reply with seemingly deliberately unhelpful reflections usually on entirely unrelated points, or confusing off-topic rants. I've found it hard to tell whether you're being rude or purpose or have no idea that you're doing it.
It's a forum, isn't it? You're always welcome to chime in if you think you can contribute.
Your personal attacks are actually pretty amusing. I've been mostly silent here for a long time, especially once AI slop hit. But one weekend I decide to go in and answer some of these posts and all of the sudden I'm the problem. Fine. Use that little flag icon and report me.
(But just so you know, this is an internet discussion forum after all. From Apple's perspective, all of this bickering is nothing more than "engagement". And there ain't so such thing as bad engagement in this context.)
If they're posting on this forum they're usually hitting a roadblock right before the finish line and a successful launch.
That's an inherent problem in any tech support forum. People invariably only ask for help when they've dug themselves very deep into some rabbit hole. They get very angry at any offers of ropes or ladders when what they clearly need is a bigger shovel.
Can you see why at this point it's not helpful to suggest that they make a different app?
Because what the App Store really needs is another astrology dating app.
Or to criticise every aspect of their implementation?
I would never criticize every aspect of an implementation, only the poor aspects.
Or to quote statistics about how many apps have to be reviewed as some kind of excuse for it taking (in some cases) over a month to get a review?
Yeah! It's only 15,000 apps a day! Come on!
In my opinion what most developers are looking for currently is [coddling]
I don't disagree. But I'm fascinated at how so many people (at least the ones on the internet) seem to feel that Apple is this Big Evil that is blocking all progress. These people have no idea how brutal the real world is. There is no other industry where businesses get this kind of kid glove treatment.
We are a family of sorts and I wouldn't want anyone to feel like they reach out for help and get told it's all their fault, or be made to feel unwelcome.
No, we are not family. This is a business. Most businesses are failures. Can't blame me for that.
You needn't worry so much. This weekend was an anomaly due to personal reasons. I hope to be getting back to my real work very soon now. Then you can resume your previous posting activity too.