It's sometimes easy for customers to throw caution into the wind and drop $0.99 on an application by simply reading the description and gazing at screenshots. It's difficult, however, to expect customers to spend their hard earned cash on a more expensive application without having the chance to give it a test-drive first.
Customers must instead rely on user and website reviews to make a decision or hope the developer creates a lite version of the application. Many developers have been getting their lite applications rejected recently due to various reasons. Apple hasn't had any specific guidelines made available to the masses as to what type of lite applications are acceptable.
Ars Technica decided to get a more clear understanding of the rules. According to Ars, applications submitted to the App Store must be fully functional stand-alone applications. There can be no mention of features that aren't included in the application.
A good example would be, a lite version of a game including only a handful of levels that the full version of the game includes, this in itself isn't against Apple's rules. It is against the rules if the lite version of a game includes only a handful of levels and displays the rest of the levels that the full version of the game includes without allowing the player to access them. Got it?
The applications also can't include the words "demo" or "beta" in the title or anywhere else for that matter. Applications may use the terms "free" and "lite" as long as they follow the rest of Apple's silly little rules.
Apple tends to rule with an iron fist every now and then but as long as developers follow the rules we can have our demos, or lite versions, whatever you want to call them.
