Comments on: Apple is losing its iPhone Value Adders

By: Aral Balkan · How Apple’s App Store review process hurt Occipital’s RedLaser SDK and my very own ‘avit app

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:45:06 +0000

[...] Beyond that, however, Occipital is a Value Adder, just like Joe Hewitt. [...]

By: Emanuele Cipolloni

Emanuele Cipolloni — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:19:34 +0000

I wish that anyone complaining about Apple’s applications review process, had the chance of spending some time dealing with Symbian Signing or worse with Java Verified. The rules are hundreds, some contradicts some others, they change continuously, apps can be rejected because you decided that a menu start with the wrong item or have a color they don’t like (happened to us a few times)

Every rejection trigger a whole new submitting process and used to cost 200 dollars for each “incident”; since that money goes in the pockets of the 3rd party company that is supposed to sign the application, they are very willing to reject as many times as possible.

Of course Apple review process is not perfect, there are a few bumps in the road to AppStore, but to be fair, none of them is unwritten, hidden or unjustifiable. After 7 years of dealing with Nokia, AppStore reviewing process is a just a dream.

By: Kenny Bunch

Kenny Bunch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:26:14 +0000

The app approval process needs more attention as well as the app store discovery/browsing model. The ability to make money or even efficiently deploy is flawed currently.

With our game Bear on a Wire – FreeRide we submitted an update.. waited 2.5 weeks
- 1st denial was a keyword they didn’t like, which we immediately changed within 5 minutes of the email

- 2nd denial stated ” The application must be a fully functional app and cannot reference features that are not implemented or up-sell to the full version. Tapping on the scores button displays an invitation to purchase the full version.”

The 2nd denial was very disturbing, isn’t the point of a free version to up sale a paid version?? We basically said if you want to save/view your high scores buy the full version. Regardless we changed it and have been waiting over 2 weeks again.

At the same time we submitted updates to our paid version which were accepted and we were able to change the release date and bump into whats new again to show that it was updated.

Now a new problem exists where they don’t allow you to bump your app back into whats new when you update. Essentially you have a one time shot at becoming popular and succeeding. I’d like to think this wasn’t the case and that viral marketing, etc held larger impacts than impulse buying. However, for the most part it seems like impulse buying (based on being in a list and being directly visible) is the largest key to success in the store. If you have no way of getting into a visible list your chances at success are pretty bleak.

I think the IPhone is great, I think it really brought the promise of the mobile market to reality. However, I don’t agree with its current state. Personally I’d love to see something like Android do very well, as I gravitate toward open dev. However, could that be reality? Don’t know at this point.