What Apple could borrow from Domino's

There's a clever post at Gedblog this morning about The App Store and Domino's Pizza Tracker. Specifically, how the Pizza Tracker's functionality could aid the App Store review process.

Ged and his coworkers at The Iconfactory have been waiting 12 days (as of this writing) for Apple to approve Ramp Champ, their next iPhone game. As Ged describes in the post, the waiting wouldn't be so bad if they knew what was going on.

The Pizza Tracker lets you monitor your pizza's progress online, dispensing updates on who's assembling it, when it went into the oven, when it went out for delivery and even the name of the person who's about to ring your doorbell. With that in mind, Ged suggests an "App Tracker" that describes where apps stand in the review process. Additionally, such a thing could aid the reviewers themselves, as they could monitor what part of the process hindered an app's release.

As we heard yesterday from Phil Schiller, Apple is aware of the App Store's issues and working to solve them. This is a new business model that still has a few kinks. It's suggestions like this that will improve things. It's nice to know that Apple is listening.

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Source: http://gedblog.com/2009/08/06/mr-jobs-dominos-calling/

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Analysis / Opinion Apple Corporate Developer App Store

There's a clever post at Gedblog this morning about The App Store and Domino's Pizza Tracker. Specifically, how the Pizza Tracker's...

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fourfour44

the biggest problem with the pizza tracker is getting "feedback" from the customers who leave rude comments for us to read or give us low ratings so we end up losing points when we get inspected despite not doing anything wrong. Some customers are just jerks.

August 08 2009 at 6:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

I've never had Domino's before, but since the last few pizzas delivered by Pizza Hut were crap, I decided to give them a try just last night (8/7/09). I even ordered from the couch on my iPhone. The pizza tracker popped up and a few minutes later told me Jessica was preparing my pizza, then a minute or two later it was in the oven. At 7:31 PM it said Guellermo was bringing it out for delivery, and a few minutes later there was a knock on my door. Seems like the tracker was pretty accurate for me.

Re: the app store process, Apple is getting so much bad PR and developer ill will from this they better fix it pretty fast. Of course, until something else comes close to rivaling the iPhone (and no, nothing really does, yet), bad PR or not, pissed off developers or not, they probably won't feel much of a sting from all this. Too many users don't care about titty-apps, dictionaries and Google Voice (what the heck is GV my friends ask) being pulled from the app store, and too many users love their iPhone to care.

August 08 2009 at 9:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

frank

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August 08 2009 at 7:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

yet another steve

I remember when I had waited 12 days and it seemed like forever.
Now I'm on day #38... "in Review"

August 08 2009 at 1:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

isrltrkfn

does the pizza-tracker show when teenage employees are rubbing snot all over your meat-lovers?

August 08 2009 at 12:41 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

movies

Domino's hasn't had 30 minutes or it's free for a long time. (Since 1993, according to wikipedia.)

August 07 2009 at 7:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to movies's comment

Derick Brown

It promoted speeding. Now its our hope that we'll get it to you in 30 min.

Daily three or four people tell me 'that was fast!' and occasionally, I'm stuck waiting at the door for more than 10 minutes because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to jump in the shower right after ordering...

Pro-tip! If it's the middle of the week, or if it's not between 5pm and 7pm, the pizza will take about 1 minute to assemble and 7 minutes in the oven. It's cut in 10 seconds and you probably live within 3 miles of the store.
Just wait till you have your food before you get tied up.

August 08 2009 at 5:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Derick Brown

Who knew TUAW is better for work venting than a non existent HR dept?

August 08 2009 at 5:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Eric

Apple should adopt Domino's delivery policy. I want to order something from the online store and have it arrive within 30 minutes, or it's free.

Since it takes at least an hour with no traffic to get to my house from either of the closest Apple stores, I'd be rolling in free Apple stuff. My town would probably be 100% Mac users.

August 07 2009 at 4:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ignobilitor

Let's just hope Apple doesn't borrow Domino's religious right extremism.

August 07 2009 at 3:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Paul

you do realize that the "pizza tracker" is only based on estimated times and not actual input from anyone...

August 07 2009 at 2:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

4 replies to Paul's comment

Rick Stratton

Apple shouldmake a free iPhone app that let's a developer track the status and wait queue of their submitted app ... But that might cause the universe to implode :)

Happy Frday, everybody.

August 07 2009 at 1:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply