On monday night, I found out that the update I’d submitted about a week previously was rejected. Specifically, it was because I had been using the standard “reply” icon (UIBarButtonSystemItemReply) for a sort of back arrow in my user interface. Here’s most of the relevant bit from the rejection letter:

“Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.5. The Reply button is to be used to send or route an item to another location. Implementing standard buttons to perform other tasks will lead to user confusion.”

They also mentioned that it would be appropriate for me to use a custom icon, and linked me to the “iPhone’s Human Interface Guideline” document, which I have read (or at least scanned), which was why I knew this was bad in the first place.

Here is the way the “return to menu” button looks in the game right now:

…and here’s the way it looks now that I’ve changed it for the update:

Yes, that is the “up” arrow turned on its side. I actually think it looks better in-game than it does floating disembodied and out of context here, but it doesn’t matter, because I’ll be changing the whole UI quite a bit when the designer that I’m working with comes through anyway.

I spent some hours last night and re-submitted the update, and also the Lite version (since it had the same problem, it seemed the safest thing to do).