Aug 10th, 2010 by flingsoft
For those that have been following us on Twitter, you have probably noticed that we have a new app in the queue with the App Store review gods. I thought I would take a moment today and give you a little insight on the process and to give you an idea the sense of frustration a lot of developers feel. I am not going to talk about the app itself because well, its a SURPRISE but you may get a few hints as you are reading.
A Word About Our Expectations
Our first two app releases, FotoFling and FotoFling Worldwide took almost 2 months from submission to release. This was primarily because the store was still in its infancy and Apple hadn’t ramped up their review process. Our second and third releases came much much easier, this is due probably both to the limited complexity and timing. Basically, it was easy to review.
This new app is something altogether different. First, it is an iPad app (with the iPhone version following shortly). Second, it makes heavy use of server side interaction and in particular, it uses Apple’s video streaming technology. We didn’t need to use this, but we wanted to support 3G out of the box so we decided to go for it.
We knew this might be a longer process and we were hoping the system had stayed as smooth as our last run through… we were clearly wrong.
The App Submission Process
We first submitted the app on 7/22/2010 and at that point your app is classified as “Waiting for Review”. There isn’t a lot of clarity to the “states” and probably the first shortcoming of the process. Here they are:
- Waiting for Review
- In Review
- Rejected
- Ready for Sale
Seems simple enough right… yes, except things to stick between Waiting and In Review for a very long time.
Our Timeline So Far
- 7/22/2010 6pm - App was submitted to Apple for review. “Waiting for Review”
- 8/2/2010 1pm- App state switches to “In Review”
- 8/2/2010 4pm - App is “Rejected” due to issues with streams validating using Apple’s tool “mediastreamvalidator”.
At this point we investigate the issue and actually talk to the developer at Apple who wrote the tool. Come to find out, there is actually an issue where mediastreamvalidator is returning invalid responses when the mime type for AAC files is not configured correctly. Bottom line, this is not an issue for the app and can be resolved in about 5 seconds. If the Apple Review team understood the technology they were testing, then we could have resolved this over e-mail in under an hour. I explain to them hoping they can retest and got no response, so we were forced to re-submit.
- 8/3/2010 3pm - App (same as original) is re-submitted to Apple for review. Again, we are “Waiting for Review
As of today, we are still Waiting and based on the last timeline they should review it tomorrow 8/11 or early Wed.
How to Solve the Problems
There are some very simple ways to resolve some of the problems with the process:
- Add an additional state to the review process for applications that make use of server-side technologies where re-submission might not be necessary to fix a problem.
- Make resubmissions after rejection a higher priority than new submissions.
- Train the reviewers to think outside of the box of the tools they use, like I said in our case things could have been resolved in the reviewer understood the tool they were using.
- Add reviewers to your team and go Sat/Sun as well. It sounds extreme, but you have a lot of apps coming in.
- Look at the entire app before rejecting so we can handle multiple issues that may have been found so we don’t go through this repeatedly.
- Add a “Notes” area to iTunes Connect so we can see the issues the reviewer documented.
Our Love for Apple
Keep in mind, none of this is a bash of Apple. They have provided us with an incredible opportunity as designers and developers the likes of which we have never seen. We are simply being constructive based on our own experiences in an effort to improve the process. Bottom line, we still love you guys… but sometimes you still frustrate us to no end.
I will keep everyone updated on our process and hopefully have a nice big post about the new app shortly. Thanks for the support!
UPDATE 8/13/2010 10:30AM
We are back “In Review”, updates to follow!
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