> Is it the App Review process’s role to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t good UI?

No, it should be the Human Interface Guidelines' role to be the arbiter of what is and is not good UI.

> Should it be the App Review process’s goal today do this?

Yes. Who else is going to do it? Apple doesn't want half-assed, misbehaving apps on their store, so they enforce it at that level. It's unfortunate that such a small detail hung up an update, but a deliberate change was made to the app to remove fundamental functionality that should exist, for no reason that I can tell. Sounds like this is exactly what the process is for, and it sounds like it worked.

> Apple doesn't want half-assed, misbehaving apps on their store

Then why are there so many half-assed, misbehaving apps on their store?

I don't think people's primary complaint is the rules (although for some it might be). Most people complain about the arbitrary enforcement. Whenever rules are enforced selectively & without rhyme or reason, people get angry -- especially when it's a situation where someone is trying to make money on your platform, and your arbitrary enforcement determines whether they're allowed to do that or not.

The HIG that Apple has never followed and has published apps and promoted UX that is actively against?

Is it an HIG requirement now? AFAIK it isn't.

It is a selectively enforced requirement.

> Is it the App Review process’s role to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t good UI?

When it comes to standard OS conventions, like the minimize button, yes. I hope they would also reject a missing “Quit” menu item. Hurts accessibility to not follow standard conventions.

> When it comes to standard OS conventions, like the minimize button, yes. I hope they would also reject a missing “Quit” menu item. Hurts accessibility to not follow standard conventions.

Although Chrome's nonsense with ⌘Q, and Adobe's messing with … everything … indicates that you can misbehave on a fundamental level as long as you're a sufficiently powerful actor.

Chrome is not in the Mac App Store so does not go through review.

Good point. Adobe Acrobat (which is what I had in mind) also doesn't seem to be.

> Is it the App Review process’s role to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t good UI?

Apple certainly sees their role as being some sort of QA gate, and this would fall under that to some extent.

>Is it the App Review process’s role to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t good UI?

As their customer, that's part of the reason I prefer to use some of their products, yes.

Not necessarily as an arbiter of good vs. bad UI, but if they have some clear and explicit UI requirements that are generally agreed to be the baseline UI requirements for an app to be accepted into the App Store, I am all for those requirements to be actually enforced.

They aren't asking for some arbitrary and vague things in terms of UI design, like "the flow of the app should be intuitive and cohesive". They are asking for very basic things like "your app should be minimizeable". It is a very explicit and clear requirement with pretty much no room for ambiguity.

>Is it the App Review process’s role to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t good UI?

Yes, obviously it is. If you're asking "should it be?", that's debatable, but I have no problem with that either.