Apple Adds “App Store Review Status”, Escalation Email, to iPhone Dev Center
TUAW reports that Apple has taken a few more baby steps down the long, winding road towards App Store fix-land, adding a new App Store Review Status widget to let developers know the current wait-time for the app approval process, and giving them access to a new escalation email address for high priority questions.
Along with the addition of keywords and improved search, it looks as though Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook was serious when he said Apple was working on improving the now 1-year old App Store.
We sincerely hope they continue. Good faith is like cash. Once you’ve spent it all, you — or your platform — is broke.
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:07 am
So gpush is in the 4 percent of apps taking longer than 4 days
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:09 am
I said it before and will say it again, the App Store was operating at a 1.0 release. Looks like they are moving up to version 1.1 with more to come.
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:29 am
Before I had even heard of gpush I had started making my app G-Push Mail
see http://gpushmail.com
I’ve been waiting over a month now with no activity on my servers to indicate they’ve done any work on reviewing it. I must be in that 4% as well!
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
14 days Eric
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
@Eric It’s funny you say that as that was the first thing I was going to write. I’m glad they leave that margin for BS denials or even more BS, pending!
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 am
@Redth Hello at me… I’d love to test it out. Duvi@C r a c k b e r r y .com if that’s possible.
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:38 am
@duvi I’ll send you an email Tuesday. I’m on canadian holidays until then
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:06 am
yes 14, excuse my typo
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
still been way past the 14 days on gpush or Redth’s app
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
oh and redth i’ll volunteer to test your app out for you
August 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Guess we’re in that 4% too. Our 3D Camera app update was submitted exactly one month ago today, and we’ve heard nothing: http://bit.ly/W9530
August 2nd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
@redth ya id like to try it out to if thats possible
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Hmm… It would be nice to have this as a dashboard widget **
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:06 am
It seems like the majority of us are in that 4%, we def are…more than 3 weeks for approval of minor updates and longer for a new app…. I wonder do you guy know if it depends also on the status of partnership?
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 am
All credibility has long since evaporated from the App Store. Developers grudgingly tolerate it because the iPhone itself is nice, Apple gives us no other choice, and can arbitrarily ding us with no recourse if we grumble.
That “good faith” coin was spent even faster — long wait times, arbitrary rejections, and refusal to provide information to help a developer fix rejectable issues, and we are supposed to believe Apple is acting in good faith? The very notion is absurd. Now that they have demonstrated with the GV debacle that they are perfectly ok with yanking accepted, successful applications out from under a developer with no reason, the idea that Apple cares one iota about their developers strains credulity.
Even if we disregard Apple’s blatant disregard through policy of developers and focus only on these technical process improvements, are we seriously expected to cheer that in 13 months, they have moved from what Reptile calls a 1.0 to a 1.1 release — a release that half-heartedly addresses 5% of issues? In what other business would this be even remotely acceptable?