Daring Fireball has retracted a post titled 'App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours' after discovering its premise was fundamentally flawed. The original article claimed Apple wrongly rejected an astronomy app called Dark Hours, but it was actually an astrology app named Asterly that was correctly rejected. Terry Godier, whose RSS reader Current gained attention, initially described the rejected app as having no astrological content, but later admitted it was entirely dedicated to astrology with features like 'Tarot card of the day'. The author accepted Godier's account without verification, leading to the erroneous publication. Godier had shown gratitude for the attention rather than correcting the record. Additionally, Godier's web app Dark Hours inadvertently caused routing issues due to shared codebase with Miguel Beher's existing dark-sky planning project of the same name. After Beher pointed out the bug on Bluesky, Godier took his site down and redirected to Beher's project. The retraction includes the original post in plain text and PDF formats for transparency. This marks the first retraction in 24 years of Daring Fireball.

The author acknowledges taking Godier's word both publicly and privately, failing to investigate the actual App Store submission history. The mistake stemmed from personal bias against astrology and admiration for Godier's previous work, creating a blind spot. The retraction emphasizes accountability in journalism and the importance of verifying claims before publication.

Godier's original App Store submission in January was named Asterly and was rejected in April for being an astrology app. He later created a separate astronomy-focused web app called Dark Hours, which he claimed was the rejected version. However, evidence suggests he may not have submitted a clean astronomy build to Apple. The incident highlights issues with App Store review processes and the complexities of app categorization.