On Tuesday, my “Dancing Alien” App has been rejected by Apple on the grounds that “it wasn’t very useful”. They pointed me to Section 2.12 of their submission guidelines which explains this.
Today, only a couple of days later, my good mate Steve Jobs resigns from Apple, probably as a direct response to this appalling decision. This is the second time in his career that he had a falling out with management over decisions he’s just not 100% behind.
I’d like to say from the bottom of my heart: thank you so much for your support, Steve – but this wasn’t necessary. I appreciate the gesture though, and I’ll put you on my list of Beta Testers so you can run t he app anyway.
I’m already planning my next app which will include the alien, so I’ll let you know how that’s going. So please, nobody else needs to quite their job over this!
The Timeline of events
There are many reports about how long it takes for Apple to make a decision on app approval. Here’s my timeline as a reminder for further submissions:
- 16/08/11, 21:48 – prepared iTunes Connect for upload
- 16/08/11, 22:11 – uploaded my build via Xcode, status changed to “uploaded”
- 23/08/11, 13:39 – status changed to “in review”
- 23/08/11, 16:38 – submission feedback received, status changed to “rejected”
So it takes about a week for someone to review it, and then I guess depending on the complexity of the app a good few hours for someone to make a decision. I’m glad to see that an app with literally one single function takes about three hours.
I appreciate Apple’s decision and agree with the “not very useful” statement. They don’t want the App Store flooded with shit so it looks like the internet, tube adverts or primetime television. That’s fair enough. Also, they’re not getting anything from a free app really other than hosting overheads.
What I do have a slight problem with though is that several thousand apps currently in the app store have been approved before these guidelines have been amended to what we have today. For completeness, someone at Apple needs to go through existing and approved apps and apply these guidelines retrospectively.
We are now working on Private Dancer, an app that’s pretty much exactly like Dancing Alien but with selectable characters. Guess I won’t bother submitting Dancing Robot in the meantime…
If you would like to try out my apps before general release, send me your UDID and I’ll add you to a list of beta testers (alongside my good mate Steve). There are several apps that help you find the UDID, go check it out.
Spaces are limited!
Jay, very astute observation, perhaps you and Steve can setup a company together around this idea
Now THAT’S a great idea – I’ll ask him 😉