Is using subviews in Alert undocumented

Question

I have asked a similar question here and got some answers, so first of all sorry for making you people bother once again.

But I have an argument this time. First I will

Answer 1

To follow on Henrik's reply, in the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines section "Designing an Alert", they say the following:

Although you can choose the number of buttons to place in an alert, a two-button alert is often the most useful, because it is easiest for users to choose between two alternatives. It is rarely a good idea to display an alert with a single button because such an alert cannot give users any control over the situation; instead, it can only display information and provide a dismiss button. An alert that contains three or more buttons is significantly more complex than a two-button alert, and should be avoided if possible. In fact, if you find that you need to offer users more than two choices, you should consider using an action sheet instead (see “Using Action Sheets” and “Designing an Action Sheet” for more information on this type of view).

Because users sometimes respond to alerts without reading them carefully, be sure to provide an appropriate default choice. To help guide inattentive users towards this choice, make the light-colored, right-hand button the safe, default alternative. For example, you might choose to make this button the Cancel button, to help users avoid inadvertently causing a dangerous action, or you might make it represent the most common response, if the resulting action isn’t destructive.

The following guidelines describe how buttons are configured in an alert:

• In an alert with two buttons, the button on the left is always dark-colored and the button on the right is never dark-colored.

• In a two-button alert that proposes a potentially risky action, the button that cancels the action should be on the right and light-colored.

• In a two-button alert that proposes a benign action, the button that cancels the action should be on the left (and therefore dark-colored).

• In an alert with a single button, the button is light-colored.

You are clearly violating the guidelines in size, shape, number, and color of the buttons in your alert view (red has a very clear meaning as a destructive action, not a confirmation). Even if Apple doesn't reject your application in review (which they tend to do for clear violations of the Human Interface Guidelines), this would be extremely confusing to your users.

Also, navigating the hidden view hierarchy for any Apple-supplied user interface element is a very bad practice. The view hierarchies are undocumented, and do change often. Many of the applications that started crashing when people upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 did so because those applications did something funky with subviews of UI elements, and those elements changed in the new OS version. Apple even specifically called this out in the iPhone OS 3.0 migration documents (which I can't find now).

Because of the problems this caused, they appear to have cracked down on this practice and have been rejecting applications because of it. Even if they don't, it shows contempt for your users if you do this, because it means that you don't care if your application breaks with future OS upgrade.