René Rebe

This overzealous review process and random rejections of Apple’s iTunes iOS App store has been discussed in all lengths all over the internet by now. It is just that recently we found enough time to finish the first App to be submitted into said App store.

You may wonder how long their review process does take, and so do I, … Until now it took them 7 full days to answer a basic question regarding a minor application meta info detail, and it has been a whole week the App is still pending for review on their side!

The sad thing is that by now we even have a version with the first post release polishing, but are afraid to reject and reload the binary, as according to the iTunes connect documents this would make the updated binary start at the very end of the review queue, again

Sigh^2!

Update: just after posting this the iTunes connect status flipped to “In Review”, keeping my fingers crossed!

Update 2: now “In Review” for 24h, fun, …

Update 3: rejected, crash for them, sigh! They must have stressed it very much, as frankly I can not get it to crash, anyway we already had polishings, performance improvements, a new icon, and other miscellaneous tweaks lingering around, let’s see how long the submitted update takes to review, stay tuned!

Update 4: submitted improved App binary, let’s see how long this takes keeping my fingers crossed

Update 5: of course one week later it is still “Waiting For Review”, …

Update 6: so it flipped to “In Review” yesterday, and surprise, after some 16+h it was accepted!!! It is online now, and can be purchased!

So all in all it took some 2 and a half weeks to get it online, the first try was rejected, because the managed to trigger an (really very exceptional) crash during their review, on average an upload takes a little over a week until it gets reviewed, and when the App state flips to “In Review” it can take over 12h until you hear about a result, …

I hope this helps !

Update 7: Yesterday we submitted the first, 1.1 update of the App, I’ll keep you informed how long the update takes to get approved, …

Update 8: Updates are apparently not going thru any quicker, it now has been again over 8 days since we submitted the update to iTunes connect for review, … it is still “Waiting for Review”, …

Update 9: After 9 1/2 days it just flipped to “In Review”, … stay tuned.

Update 10: How can they possibly review a simple update for more than 48h? This is insane!?! It’s just adding some configuration elements, iPad UI compatibility, fixing some bugs, etc, … customers are waiting, no Flash hiding inside, …

Update 11: After 4 days “In Review” “Rejected”, because they no longer like the screenshot showing an “Welcome to the Mac ADC” letter that we already used in the initial 1.0 version, now considering it confidential, … So much for using real-life examples even promoting Apple itself, …

Update 12: 24h later, exchanged screenshot (now using a pretty ExactCODE letter, so promoting our company, not Apple) and some becalming talks with Apple, they pulled it out of “Rejected” to “Ready for Sale”, enjoy! Lesson learned: “Rejected” is not game over, and they can still manually touch it, puh. Current review time: 2 weeks.

Update 13: late-2011 report

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 16:24 and is filed under Software, Life, Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.