Mine: require setting a URL to support password managers. You download an app, go to login, tap the password field, and open Bitwarden. Does it find your login? Half the time, nope! The dev didn’t tell Apple one time what their URL is, so everyone now has to search their password manager every time.
Force iOS / iPadOS devs to make their apps available on macOS. It’s pretty cool that you can run iPadOS apps natively on macOS but most devs simply don’t allow it.
iirc there was a short time where the apps were published by default once the compatibility layer was in place. i definitely used the feature to make my app work across the whole product line, but there were a couple of things that were broken on macos that i had to put in fixes or workarounds. that might explain why more developers haven’t released their ios apps on mac.
Since the question is specifically about what Apple could make developers do, I’ll say this: enforce the App Store guideline rule about not using push notifications for advertising.
I very rarely enable push notifications on apps anymore because so many use them for spammy advertisements. This makes apps less useful than they could be if notifications were used responsibly.
It’s still there, although there’s a loophole of course.
4.5.4:
Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages.
The “explicit opt-in” could easily be language hidden in a massive ToS that nobody reads. So I guess I wish Apple would do away with that entirely and start enforcing it.
Apple is the one holding back the user experience on their operating systems, not third party developers.
Force them (including myself) to implement dark mode, and soon dark app icons.
Thirdparty developers literally carried the Apple experience to where it is now. The ones stopping Apple from being better are Apple themselves
