Here they are again. The empire strikes back!
It it wasn’t for business, I could laugh about this story, but Apple Inc. reviewers simply appear to mistake incompetence, ignorance and arbitrariness with that what they call “review process”.
So the hilarious iPhone Application Store review team has rejected my simple battery application for the second time now:
We’ve reviewed iBattery Pro and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it provides to the user potentially inaccurate diagnostic functionality for iPhone OS devices. There is currently no publicly available infrastructure to support diagnostic analysis.
Since this is a well known standard text block (which documents that these guys are at least capable of copy/paste) I ask myself why the 10 other battery applications that are doing exactly the same thing (except of not having my gorgeous layout) have been approved. They all have in common that they are using the official and public available [UIDevice currentDevice].batteryLevel call (hm, did I read something on “no publicly available infrastructure”?).
Just to give you an idea of this “inaccurate” monster application, here’s a screenshot:
Battery Application Screenshot
Well, I don’t want to blame my competitors. It seems that they have been lucky or that Apple doesn’t like me. In fact I am thinking that I am being discriminated by Apple, but that’s another funny story…
Apple seems to have massive problems with the amount of applications that are being submitted since the release of iPhone OS 3.0. What I’ve heard is that they outsourced the whole review process and this is the result of it. Getting standard text blocks of people that aren’t in the position to review an application. I am very interested if there is anything else they use instead of furtune telling to get an app reviewed. The only thing you can do is to resubmit the application and pray that your are getting someone competent. For me it’s now the third time with the same app. It always takes days (or weeks) of waiting until the next surprise and that’s very embarrassing.
Hey reviewers: Even if it’s a small $0.99 application and maybe small potatoes for you: I have invested a lot of time, creativity and money in this little product. Please treat me in the same way I would treat a product of yours!
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Tags: app, app store, Apple, informed, iphone, reject, review, store
[...] Potentially inaccurate diagnostic functionality [...]
Somehow, this story reflects pretty much the american centric and ignorant/arrogant view of Apple, at least perceived by the clients. I wish apple would listen more and treat their clients better, even from abroad. Maybe there is a lack of competition in the market segment.
We got an identical rejection for one of our updates of Air Sharing Pro. Air Sharing and Air Sharing Pro both include a feature that displays your iPhone’s IP address and Bonjour address, or, if none is available, an indications either that Wi-Fi is disabled, or that the iPhone is not currently connected to a network, as appropriate. We didn’t do anything nefarious to accomplish this. No secret private methods, no hacked private frameworks, and no stepping outside the sandbox. We had already had about ten updates accepted with this feature, without a hitch. But apparently a fresh batch of wet-behind-the-ears web-designers-cum-App-reviewers had been contracted, and by the luck of the draw one of their ilk had been assigned to review our submission.
After the rejection, we complained to our partnership manager (who ignored us, because he has already publicly stated on his blog that his employment at Apple is soul sucking, and he evidently just wanted to go home to Santa Cruz and mope to some emo music, but I’ll save the details of that one for another rant), complained to somebody else at WWDR (who actually takes his job seriously and was very helpful) and resubmitted the identical binary. The re-submission was accepted without a problem.
When the Fickle Finger of Fate pokes you in the eye, all you can do is put ice on it and use the other eye.
Re Boris’s suggestion that this somehow demonstrates an “american centric” view, could you elaborate? I don’t see how that’s relevant to this story. Not that it’s not true; I just don’t see how you got there from here. But I’ll grant you arrogant and ignorant.
Our latest adventures with the App Store reviewers is detailed in my blog.
@Boris: I don’t know if the “american centric” way has to do with the actual problem. In fact I thought (before this happened) that the best support I’ve ever had was with companies in the US. But treating developers the way Apple does at the moment is so random and unfair, I don’t want to accept it. At least I want to know a comprehensible reason for the rejection (but I think there isn’t one).