How Apple reviews apps
Here’s a really cool article from CNBC that details how Apple reviews apps before they show up on the App Store. In short, every app or app update is reviewed by real people at Apple before they’re available for download. Apple says 100,000 apps are reviewed each week, so you can imagine how huge of a task this is.
According to the article, more than 300 Apple employees are in the review department. Reviewers have to review 50-100 apps each day, the team speaks 81 different languages, and the department has offices in Cork, Ireland, and Shanghai, China. This is a big, global effort.
Frankly, I’m surprised there aren’t more people on the team. For comparison, this March 2018 article says that Facebook has 7,500 content moderators, and I would assume that’s higher now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple also continues to staff up on reviewers over time.
The team also has an “executive review board” that sets policy for what can and can’t be included in an app and makes decisions about apps that need to be banned. An example: they banned the Infowars app last year because “it published videos that included threats to reporters.” Yikes — probably a good reason to ban the app!
I encourage you to take a few minutes to read the article when you get a chance so you can learn more about how the apps you use every day make it onto the App Store.
Are there any other things about Apple or the tech industry you’d like me to write about? Let me know and I can consider them for a future newsletter!
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