Apple's App Store Rejects Astronomy App as 'Astrology,' Then Invents a Tarot Feature

Developer Terry Godier submitted Dark Hours, a polished native iOS app built around his astronomy website for casual stargazers. Apple’s App Review rejected it as an astrology app — despite the app containing no horoscopes, tarot, or anything resembling fortune-telling. The confusion appears rooted in the one-letter gap between ‘astronomy’ and ‘astrology,’ but even a few seconds inside the app would have made its actual subject obvious to any reviewer.

The more damning part is what happened on appeal. Rather than correcting an obvious misread, the App Review Board upheld the rejection by claiming the app ‘includes a live tarot reading feature’ — a capability that simply does not exist. John Gruber frames this as Kafkaesque: an error that a functioning review process would have reversed instantly instead escalated into a fabricated justification.

Beyond the individual injustice to a developer, Gruber’s point is systemic. Dark Hours is exactly the kind of well-crafted, platform-native app (Liquid Glass UI, refined typography, genuinely more useful than the website) that Apple ought to showcase. Rejecting it on trivially refutable grounds hurts developers and Apple alike, and signals that App Store review lacks the basic self-correction mechanisms a fair adjudication process requires.