The Waiting Game
CommentsThere is no doubt that the iPhone App Store has been a huge success.
There is also no doubt that the iPhone’s success has been greatly helped by the apps developers have made for the iPhone. Without the developers and their apps there are no “There’s an app for that” commercials which have been so successful in marketing the iPhone.
Despite all of this great success, the app store isn’t perfect. Right now is not the time to enumerate all of those imperfections but I will single out one because it is currently a huge point of frustration for myself and many of you.
The Waiting Game used to be a quick event and would last about 3 days until Apple approved or rejected your application. As of this writing, Manifesto 1.0.6 has been in Apples hands for 16 days. The only communication I had from Apple since August 10th was the following:
Dear Justin,
Your application, Manifesto, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.
Thank you for your patience.
Regards,
iPhone Developer Program
That was August 10th, almost a week ago. I replied to the email immediately asking for any type of estimate or reason and received no reply. I emailed them again on Monday and have yet to receive a reply.
It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of Apple and for the most part I do not have a problem with the black box that Apple is. It provides great drama with the speculation and rumors, which in the end turns into great marketing. When you’re a big company you can afford to do this but even lately Apple has been under a lot of criticism for that very reason.
If you’re a small developer, the black box approach doesn’t really work for a variety of reasons. With the amount of competition on the app store, users assume the product is no longer being worked on and will move on to a competitor.
In an effort to keep Manifesto competitive, I’ve been recently working on quick releases to address fixes and add new features. However, its extremely frustrating to have finished a feature or a fix 2 weeks ago and have it yet to see the light of day on the App Store.
This is especially frustrating when its a high priority fix for a crash that affects all users. Granted I wish I never shipped a version with a crash like this, but if Apple didn’t pick up on it, what are they doing when they review these apps? I’m not exactly sure what they are looking for, nor has Apple been clear about that. I do think its crazy that an app that has been in the app store for almost a year needs 14 days to review when the only change is to fix a crash. At this point any updates to Manifesto should just go right to the App Store without any approval. If Apple had published strict guidelines they could then hold the developer responsible for submitting a violating app and greatly reduce or eliminate the approval process.
These long lag times are starting to feel like my day job(large software company) which is exactly the opposite of what I thought developing for App Store would be.
In the scheme of things, I’m not the only developer frustrated by this and I’m not sure Apple has much incentive to change it because there is no real competition to force them to do so. Maybe the Palm Pre, Android, or Windows Mobile will get to the point that they can compete and make Apple strive to make the store better…
I would love to hear what you guys think of the App Store in general, so let your opinion be heard in the comments below!
