You can love your family, but still become annoyed by their actions on occasion. It doesn’t mean you care for them any less, because of it.

This is why, despite Apple having some of the most zealous fans around, you still tend to hear this same group’s Developers audibly grumbling about its (App)roval process. Their ever-changing rules can be as clear as mud. And if you can fully grasp it, then I’d like to ask you to take a stab at explaining the last two seasons of Lost for me.

Unlike the Google Market, which allows basically everyone aboard the free love peace train, the Apple Store functions more like the TSA and frisks all apps before deciding whether to allow them to fly the friendly skies.

Requiring a review and approval in and of itself isn’t what causes the headaches for developers. After all, this does make for a better user-experience overall when searching for apps. Anyone who has spent any time searching the messy teenagers’ closet that is the Google Market after being used to the orderly Apple Store, will attest to this.

It’s the (seemingly) willy-nilly and subjective rejections of apps that cause confusion and frustration.

As a developer noted in an AdWeek story, an app can be rejected sometimes without a clear reason why, nor how to remedy it. In many ways, the Apple Store feels like the movie industry’s MPAA.

The Motion Picture Association of America will screen a film that’s been submitted to them and give it a rating. Directors will get their movie back and find it received the dreaded NC-17 for example, when they expected an R, yet the reasons for the rating are too generic to allow them to begin any edits that could bring them to compliance.

Filmmakers and studios can make some changes and resubmit to the MPAA, but then they’re effectively getting back into the line waiting for review. There’s no clear understanding of how many people are ahead of them or how long they can expect to get their new rating. It could be as quick and easy as the 15 Items or Less line at the grocery store, or it could be as painful as the DMV. This is why knowing the reasoning for said-rating and potential “fixes” are so important, because you don’t want to make multiple visits to this line. It doesn’t matter what your industry is – time is money.

The Apple Store works in a similar function.

Developers know there’s usually a week and a half or two in the approval process. But that can vary. And then if your app has been rejected, once you re-submit, there’s no guarantees you won’t have to wait another couple of weeks all over again. Whether it’s a movie studio trying to push a big budget summer release out by Fourth of July weekend or a client wanting a tourism app to coincide with a holiday travel weekend, this can result in lots of sweaty palms and gray stress hairs.

Why do some apps get rejected while others in a similar vain skate on through? Why do some films with boxes and boxes of ammo emptied on its celluloid receive a PG-13 rating while another gets slapped with an R? Does it have to do with the clout of the company releasing the app? Or the likability of the movie’s star? Or does it simply depend on whether or not the person reviewing the app/film is having a good week or not?

Holy Conspiracy Theories, Batman!

Some app developers and independent filmmakers have decided to bypass these channels to release their apps and films elsewhere, without review. But they do so at a severe cost – literally – limiting the number of eyes that will ever be transfixed on their works and therefore, potential revenue.

Meanwhile, the vast majority continue to play in the sandbox with their siblings.

Well aware that the experience is usually pleasant, but that there will just be days where you come home with sand in unfortunate places.

Bruce is the Director of Client Services at Roll Mobile.

He is a lover of good music, bad puns and ugly sweater vests. Want to learn more about adding mobile components to complement your existing marketing strategies? Or have a BLOG@ROLL topic you’d like us to explore?

Contact bruce@whyroll.com or on Twitter via @RollMobile.