- Store
- App Store
- Rule
- Guidelines 4.3(a), 4.3(b) and 4.2.6
- App
- Card Lab
- When
- October 2026
- Status
- Card Lab approved on the reply, October 22, 2026
The first one: a re-skin
Pie Cannon is a shooting gallery we cut from Taco Rain, a catching game. We knew 4.3 was a risk, so it got a new palette and every piece of art was redrawn. Apple rejected it under 4.3(a) anyway, and we withdrew it.
Looking back, new art over the same loop wasn’t enough. Since then it has gained power-ups that are counted in pies and a generated daily stall, and it shares 15% of its source with Taco Rain. It hasn’t been resubmitted yet.
The second one: not a re-skin
Card Lab, a trading card maker, came back on October 14, 2026 under 4.3(a), 4.3(b) and 4.2.6, with Apple’s form of nine questions about who built the app and how.
We measured it against its parent before answering. At most 18% of source files were shared with Mix-a-Beast, and all of them were infrastructure: ads, settings, the router. No screens, art, sounds or listing text in common. So the binary wasn’t the problem. Our reading is that Apple looks at the account: many apps, released close together, from forks of each other.
We answered the nine questions in the App Review reply without resubmitting. The reply box stops at 4,000 characters, which is less than it sounds once you’re explaining nine things.
How Card Lab’s ended
Apple approved it on October 22, 2026, eight days after the rejection. We never sent a new build. Build 19, the one that was rejected, is the one on the App Store now, so the reply did all of it.
It wasn’t the last one. Practice Proof, a music practice log, got a 4.3(a) on October 19 with a warning about Extended Review for repeat submissions. We answered in the reply box again and it was live the next day. Which Formula, a study aid for Algebra 2 and trig, came back under 4.3(a) on October 21. That reply is still with Apple.
What we changed for every app
- Measure similarity against every sibling before submitting: source, listing text, screenshots, and bundled assets like sounds and fonts. We measured 29 of our forks this way.
- Each app gets its own header and layout, not stock widgets in a new color.
- No more than one new app per store category in review at a time, and never two similar apps together.
- Depth before a resubmission, such as a feature the parent doesn’t have, rather than a new coat of paint.
We’ll add Which Formula’s answer here when it comes.