I notice there is a bit of bitching happening from some developers about not getting their application processed quickly enough - and whilst I sympathise - does everything think that maybe Apple is having an administration nightmare processing 250,000 downloads and 25,000 full applications ?
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App Store Snowball?
- Thread starter surferfromuk
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All we're asking for is visibility into the process. Something like "it's taking us x days to process an upgrade on average and y days to process a new app." A statement along those lines would go a long way towards quelling the concerns of most developers.
I have a feeling that Apple is going to multiply the number of employees that deal with the app store asap. It's a huge money maker for them.
The acceptance time for new apps seems to be OK. The problem for a lot of us is that updates to our apps are taking much, much longer to approve than new apps. Nothing bothers a developer more than having a new version of their software that addresses a lot of things the users have wanted but not having any way to deliver it in a timely manner.
My personal situation is that I submitted my app on July 6 and it was approved on July 9. Pretty good turnaround time, nothing to complain about there. On the same day (July 9), I submitted an update that fixed a few small issues I had noticed since I submitted the original version. It is now over a week later and I am still waiting for that update to be reviewed. To make matters worse, I have received great feedback from my users and have made several more improvements/bug fixes since the store opened, and I have another new update ready to go. BUT there is no way to update or delete an already submitted update, so whenever my first update is finally approved, I'll have to wait yet another indeterminate amount of time for my users to have the second, latest update.
My opinion as a customer is right now new applications should be given precedence over updates to already existing applications. I don't see why someone who was already lucky enough to get their app out there gets to further delay others from getting exposure, others who may very well not even have the same bugs, issue and/or need for udpates that the software being updated have.
The store is nowhere near a critical mass, so I hope they get it heavily in favor of new applications for a good while over updates for existing ones.
The store is nowhere near a critical mass, so I hope they get it heavily in favor of new applications for a good while over updates for existing ones.
I disagree. As people submit their 1.0 to the appstore, some of them have bugs or critical missing features. In a rush, devs fix bugs and add features and sometimes within a couple days have a new version submitted. In the mean time, during the wait, comments are bad, ratings are bad dinging the app for things that have been fixed and all the dev can do is sit by, hope and pray apple lets the app through quickly.
At least first time apps reputations aren't being dinged during the wait.
At least first time apps reputations aren't being dinged during the wait.
I understand the problems, but I think Apple is doing the right thing by concentrating on new apps first before app updates - because there are still apps that were submitted before July 11 that haven't been released. If I was the developer of one of those apps, I'd be pissed if Apple was taking time to let some other company fix their bugs rather than approving of mine when I decided to miss the App Store launch to make sure I shipped a complete, bug-free product.
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I absolutely agree. More time should be spent ironing out the bugs of an application before it's initial release. It benefits the customer ad well as the developer (they can avoid having terrible initial reviews because their app is buggy)
DreamPod said:
I absolutely agree. More time should be spent ironing out the bugs of an application before it's initial release. It benefits the customer ad well as the developer (they can avoid having terrible initial reviews because their app is buggy)
No one shipped a bug free anything (except maybe the flashlight apps) within the constraints Apple gave. We had a maximum of 5 test devices and no way to get any reasonable beta group. Apps that use the GPS didn't even have that much as the hardware wasn't released. Every app on the app store is a beta version. I wouldn't be upset if I saw no one getting updated, what I'm upset about is that Apple is updating some apps very quickly (SplashShopper has gone through 2 updates and Jott has gone through 3) while others of us are stuck in limbo even when we submitted our updates before they submitted theirs.