Apple's "all or nothing" stance on iCloud: Is it a hard guideline? [closed]

Question

The Apple documentation seems to consistently state that the user-generated documents should either all be stored locally or should all be stored on iCloud. Here is one example from this iOS page (the emphasis on All is theirs):

All documents of an application are stored either in the local sandbox or in an iCloud container directory. A user should not be able to select individual documents for storage in iCloud.

I would like to allow users to manage documents individually: perhaps they want one to be local (to save space from their iCloud allowance), another to be on iCloud so they can manipulate it across devices, and another one to be on DropBox so they can copy it out into a friend's account or back it up manually or even edit it externally. The all-or-nothing approach would actually get in the way of flexibility, especially when I come to introduce DropBox sync. In my case, the individual choice also makes for simpler UI.

So the question is: Can I expect trouble at review time if I stick to my plans to allow users to choose their storage preference (local, iCloud and soon DropBox) per individual document? I haven't found specific guidelines for this. Edit: None of the guidelines even mention iCloud.

Answer 1

It's a should, not a must (just as you should support all orientations on the iPad, but I don't think they'll force you to if the UI would need a complete rework). If you have a sufficiently compelling use-case and a non-clunky UI, I suspect they'll let it through, but I haven't tested this.

If it's not in the review guidelines, then I doubt it's ground for rejections apart from any requirement for "usability" — but honestly, given the average quality of UIs out there, I would not be too worried.

(Indeed, a strict interpretation of that guideline is that you're not supposed to use Dropbox/Google Drive/etc/roll-your-own-cloud-storage, but that's almost certainly not the intent unless they're inviting antitrust lawsuits.)