All Articles Tagged app review process

In a post on their official blog, Google has let the world know that, “in the interest of transparency,” they’re allowing the FCC to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request to fully publish their response about the whole Google Voice Rejection Brouhaha, and it’s an interesting read, to say the least. You can grab the PDF of the letter right here.

The letter, which had been previously redacted, claims that not only did Apple fully reject both Google Voice and Latitude, but the rejection came after conversations between top executives, including Phil Shiller. This contradicts Apple’s claim that they had not rejected the apps, but merely reviewing them in a more extensive way.

The reason for the rejections (as Google calls them) is what you probably expected: “duplicate functionality.” Google writes:

Apple’s representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone. The Apple representatives indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality

The story is much the same for Google Latitude, but has a bit more shadenfreude to it since the functionality that’s being duplicated is “a version of Google Maps.” Google also details the dates of calls, emails, and in-person conversations between Alan Eustace of Google (VP of Engineering and Research) and Phil Schiller of Apple (VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, but you knew that).

So… the worm and turned and Google’s letting the world know they feel rejected. How do you feel after this latest development?

As part of their response to the FCC’s investigation into the rejection of Google Voice, Apple stated that they 1) receive about 8500 apps and app updates to review each week, 2) each app is reviewed by two reviewers, and 3) employ more than 40 full-time, trained reviewers.

Assuming that (3) doesn’t mean there are scads more part-time, untrained reviewers doing grunt work in the dark, sweaty back room (more on that in a moment), some math has been run by Mike Ash:

With 17,000 [8500 x 2] reviews per week and 45 reviewers, that means each reviewer performs 378 reviews per week. At 40 hours per week, this is 9.4 reviews per hour, or one review every 6.4 minutes.

Ash points out how this means months of work by a developer is left to the tender mercies of less than 10 minutes (counting overtime) with someone tasked to look at almost 400 other apps that same week. Can we get a “yikes!”

Back to part-time, untrained reviewers, Marco.org hazards to guess:

There could be 41 full-timers and 40 more part-timers. There’s a lot of evidence to indicate that most (if not all) of the front-line reviews are by non-native-English speakers and on schedules that strongly imply that they’re offshore. This may be the cause of a lot of the frustrating rejections in which the reviewer didn’t understand something about the application or description that seems clear to most Americans.

To recapitulate. Between iPhone users and 8500 weekly app submissions (each reviewed twice), stands possibly an unknown number of outsourced, untrained frontliners, 40 odd trained, full-time second liners, an unquantified star-chamber of executive reviews, and ultimately one Phil Schiller who may or may not email the developer or a blog (or two) about it?

Oh, and Steve Jobs.

Mike Ash (via Marco.org) makes this point following the FCC responses today:

Ignoring the question of why it’s Apple’s job to prevent their customers from breaking AT&T’s terms of service, it’s interesting to note just how much this policy is centered on the United States. The iPhone is sold in dozens of different countries and works with dozens of different cellular carriers all over the world. You can be certain that each one of those carriers has different terms of service. Why is AT&T so privileged that their terms of service, and theirs alone, are the ones that Apple looks at when deciding whether to reject or accept any given app? It’s quite likely that people all over the world are missing out on great iPhone apps that their cellular carriers would permit them to use just because AT&T does not permit Americans to use them.

This by way of saying, for example, because AT&T prohibits SlingPlayer from running over 3G, users in Canada (on Rogers), the UK (on 02), Japan (on SoftBank), etc. are also prevented from using SlingPlayer of 3G.

Apple certainly makes only specific mention of AT&T in their consideration process. However, AT&T was the first iPhone carrier signed, so perhaps there’s something in that original deal that makes it so — or is it just that Apple is headquartered in the US?

Now, presuming those other, international carriers aren’t just sighing in relief that AT&T takes the hit on this so they don’t have to (anyone think Rogers, O2, SoftBank, et al. are dying to take the network hit that comes with an uber-popular, functionality surfacing device like the iPhone doing high-bandwidth tasks like streaming TV shows and movies?

There are certainly examples enough of region-specific apps (AT&T’s own apps are just in the US), and apps that are missing from just one regional app store (Skype is not in the Canadian App Store, reportedly due to a patent dispute).

As mentioned previously, Sling has submitted a 3G-enabled version of SlingPlayer for non-US App Stores (Canada, UK, Japan, etc.), so we’ll soon see.

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.

For the last week or so I’ve been beta testing a well known iPhone application. Beta testing involves using the 100 iPhone “Ad Hoc” distribution method first outlined at WWDC 2008. I was planning on writing up the process, and my experiences being involved in it (all straightforward, all great — all definitely far more work for developers than testers) when, thankfully for all involved, one of the foremost iPhone devs, Craig Hockenberry of Twitteriffic fame, went and did it the way it should be done.

Interested in Ad Hoc distribution and how iPhone beta testing works? Get you to reading over at his site, Furbo.org.

Meanwhile, Erica Sadun over at TUAW presents a very well though out essay on how Apple could (and should?) improve the App review process with more objectivity, consistency, and transparency.

In [redacted] NDA land, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball offers an interesting theory, via a reader: what if it’s all about patent protection? Seems Apple might start the clock ticking when the NDA is lifted, and the technology gets published, and their lawyers may not have all the dots and crosses in place yet.

Finally, is it time to put BoxOffice on a milk carton yet?