Has Apple Finally Had Enough Of Emoji In App Descriptions In The App Store?
April 23, 2013
Apple has apparently begun restricting developers from including special characters in their app's descriptions in the App Store.
AppleInsider has the story:
The exact date of the reported change is unknown, but a developer at TapeACall, who informed AppleInsider of the modified rules, said the use of special characters was available when they updated their app a little over two weeks ago.Indeed, just a week ago, Tigerbears was still able to post a set of release notes containing special characters. Tigerbears has made a habit out of using special characters, particularly emoji, as bullet points for the release notes of its popular App.net client, Felix. As shown in the screenshot above, Tigerbears even uses a tiger icon and a pair of bear icons as its sign-off. In the case of TapeACall developer Epic Enterprises, it was still able to use checkmarks as bullet points for an update to its call recording app early this month. Also, it was still able to use checkmarks for the feature list, explosion symbols for the sale note, "no" symbols for an important caveat, and speech bubbles for the FAQ in the app's App Store descriptions. But, as indicated in the screenshot below, such special characters are no longer allowed in both the Description and What's New sections of an app in the App Store. There's no official word yet from Apple regarding the restriction. But given the company's predilection for clean and no-frills design, it's no surprise that Apple would go for standard text and standard text only.