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!

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And why are there a lot applications in the app store that DO estimate the remaining time?

I asked him this question and he told me that he cannot discuss this question with me – interesting…

So

• Apple has a policy of no estimations but doesn’t write it down for the developers
• Regardless of the policy there are applications that are in the store, making money
• You need to have the luck that a reviewer is calling you to tell you the “real” reason of the rejection because they only send general standard text blocks

What do I do now. Why isn’t Apple willing to discuss that there ARE approved applications violating Apple’s policy? Is this fair? This injustice is a scandal!!!

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Dear Helmut,

Your application, iBattery Pro 1.0, is requiring unexpected additional time for review.   We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
iPhone Developer Program

As you can read in many other blog posts, this often happens when you complain and mention similar applications that have not been recjected. No I’m in the infinite review loop. Congratulation Apple, you just won another friend!

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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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