In case you’re really behind the eight ball and a buggy version of your app passed the review and got into the store, here are some recommendations by iPhone developer Emanuele Vulcano:

1. Brace yourself for user rage. Customers aren’t going to be happy even though you’re going to treat this situation as proactively as possible.
2. Update your application description immediately. Explain what is wrong with the update and why users shouldn’t upgrade. Put the word IMPORTANT in capitals.
3. Submit your bug fix and then contact the escalation/approval team email from the developer help pages. Explain what happened. If your situation is critical, they can speed up the review process. Just take into account any time they’ll spend before looking at your e-mail.

Ok, I had enough time to prepare the next update, so let’s get started…

Tweet This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post

After having (like many others) this illustrative phone call with Richard Chipman (he used exactly the same words as in the referring MacRumors article) I didn’t capitulate since I was really angry about the fact that there were identical applications in the store that got accepted. Well – I don’t blame my competitors for the fact that they got lucky but I needed clarity. I wanted to know if the App Store might be the platform I want to make business with. And from a business point of view this was unacceptable. On one hand there are lucky people who can make a fortune with their apps and on the other hand there are the ones appearing on Richards desk to be told that there is a policy that doesn’t fit with Apples present company philosophy.

Since Richard isn’t the one who is authorized to discuss any matter with you and Big Steve would not listen because he isn’t wasting his time with crappy $0.99 apps I wrote a letter to a higher executive in the hope that someone at Apple is using his brain and realises that it’s against any rules of a free market (as far as you can tell the App Store a free market) and against any common sense to treat companies with identical products in these two different ways. Well – what should I say: I didn’t expect an answer to my email. But I got one. I was told that they were dicussing my matter in the team:

…we are currently discussing your app and the others. I’ll keep you updated.

This was 10 days ago. Yesterday when I was about to leave for a birthday party, I got a phone call:

Hello. This is Richard … I wanted to tell you that we make an exception to your application … Can you resubmit the application? … Can you do this fast?

Well I don’t remember his exact words because I was too baffled but I delayed my departure, resubmitted my app, and voila: Four hours later my app was ready for sale!

Finally Apple did the right thing! They cannot treat companies with identical products in different ways. What I still can’t understand are their various reasons (ideas) and policies that led to the bunch of App Store rejections over the last two months. But take this message: Never give up if you feel treated unequal!

Tweet This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post

Motivated by my youngest experience with Apple Inc. I decided to tell you the story how long it took to get my approval as a developer in the iPhone Developer Program.

Do you think it’s easy to become a registered iPhone developer? Hey, just pay your EUR 79 to apple and you can start right away. If you’re a lucky one whose name only contains ASCII characters this might be true… But that’s only one part of the story.

February 23, 2009

Applied for the iPhone Developer Program. Everything’s gone smooth. So I waited for an answer. Ah, did I mention that I enrolled for the Standard Invididual Program (didn’t know that since it wasn’t written there if I remember correctly, but it definitely wasn’t the registration for the big companies > 500 people).

March 2, 2009

Hey! It took only a week to send me an email that “documentation is needed for my Program enrollment”. What? Send a FAX to the states? Hello! I am living in Europe? Isn’t there anyone in Europe who can veryify my business? Anyhow: Why did they want my business credentials? Ah, in my iTunes profile I added my company name to my personal data. OK. Not so bad. I faxed the documents and waited…

March 18, 2009

Unbelievable! An answer. But not the answer I wanted to have.

Thank you for contacting the Apple Developer Connection regarding the iPhone Developer Program.
We can confirm that we have received your business documentation. However, it refers to “Helmut Schottmüller” while you enrolled as ”aurealis ”. In order for your enrollment to be considered, your enrollment information must match with the business documents. We ask that you please provide us with the relevant business documentation for ”aurealis”. In addition, please ensure that the Company address is as shown on your enrollment information.

That’s what happens when US bureaucrats check business documentations from European countries. Of course there is my personal name on the document and not the company name. In germany it is possible to own a personal business and use a company name (if the owner is written aside). I wrote another email and explained…

March 23, 2009

Please know that if it is not possible to provide the requested documentation then you have to withdraw your enrollment as a Company and instead consider enrolling as an Individual.

Hey! I enrolled as an individual. It was YOUR software that decided I have to be a company because there is a company name in my iTunes profile! And: I am the company. It’s an individual business but unfortunately the company name is not listet on the documents. So what! That’s legal in germany.

I capitulated.

Withdraw.

New individual application: Oh, see, now the ajaxified stuff is in the developer portal too. Web 2.0 everywhere. Hyper-modern. So I enrolled my application for the iPhone Developer Program again. Ha. There’s an individual application. This looks better than the application forms I had the last time. Noooo. It took me many tries since these new Apple developer pages (all written in WebObjects) usually don’t accept other characters than ISO 8859-1 (Latin1). I am a WebObjects developer myself and for years I am writting UTF-8 capable applications, so what’s the point? Unfortunately my last name (“Schottmüller”) contains a german Umlaut and my home address another one.

The first page of the application accepted my Name, on the second page when the data was redisplayed, my Name was displayed correctly but in the billing address it was wrong and shown as “Schottm?ller”. So I went back and corrected it. Nooooooo. Never do that After the correction, both, my name in the name field and in the billing address were wrong, now cut off, both “Schottm”. I never got back the first state where at least on field had the correct name.

Screenshot of the enrollment process

It was impossible to get my real name and my address into the system. So I wrote a new follow up to Apple support.

April 3, 2009

Thank you for contacting the Apple Developer Connection regarding the iPhone Developer Program.
Should you wish to enroll again as an Individual, please submit a new enrollment using the same Apple ID and email address with the ones used for your original enrollment. Please know that before submitting your NEW Enrollment, please clear your browser’s cookies, cache and history, ensure that it is configured to accept all cookies, quit and restart your browser. Once you have completed the new enrollment, please then contact us back with the NEW Enrollment ID so that we review the NEW application.

I would advise you not to use foreign characters, as they are not recognizable from our system.

Dear Helmut SchottmŸller, Thank you for applying to the iPhone Developer Program. To activate, simply click on the Activation code link below.

Funny, why do they misspell my name? I did anything by the book. I entered “Helmut Schottmueller” during the whole application process. From where did they get my data? Anyway. I was lucky. I got my application. Hurray!

… Click …

Nooooooooooooo!

Screenshot: Unable to activate membership

What the … OK. Another support mail.

April 15, 2009

Please know that we use technology which matches your iPhone Developer Program enrollment with the billing information for your program order. Your recent order information did not sufficiently verify your identity and your order was placed on a temporary hold. We have reviewed the issue and have removed the hold on the order. At this time, we ask that you please refer to the original activation code email that you received and click through the link once again. You should be able to now successfully activate your program.

Finally. I could activate my membership! Tadaaaaa.

Apple fairly charged my credit card on April 15. But they stole me at least 5 years of lifetime

Tweet This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post