Gruber Retracts First Daring Fireball Post in 24 Years After App Store Rejection Story Unravels

John Gruber has retracted a Daring Fireball post for the first time in his 24 years writing the site, after the story he built it on turned out to be false. The original piece slammed Apple for rejecting an iOS app as astrology when, its developer Terry Godier claimed, it was a straightforward astronomy tool with no horoscopes, tarot, or occult features. Gruber took Godier at his word both publicly and in private iMessage, and even shared a draft that Godier reviewed without objection.

In reality, the app Apple rejected—submitted under the name “Asterly,” not “Dark Hours”—was a genuine astrology app, complete with a “Tarot card of the day” feature. Apple’s rejection under App Store guideline 4.3(b), and its later affirmation by the App Review Board, were both correct. Gruber says he has no evidence Godier ever submitted a version stripped down to only the astronomy features, and acknowledges his own contempt for astrology made him credulous rather than skeptical.

The episode got messier still. Godier’s later “Dark Hours” website collided with Miguel Beher’s unrelated open-source astrophotography planner, also called DarkHours, and appeared to share a bug that routed users to random locations in Mexico. Godier eventually took his site down and redirected the domain to Beher’s project. Gruber, keeping the original post publicly archived for accountability, apologized to readers and to the Apple reviewers whose competence he had publicly questioned.