Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, App Store, SDK, App Review
App Store Lessons: App Emergencies
Bad things happen. Despite all your user testing, sometimes an iPhone app release hits the wild with unexpected results. I recently heard about one application upgrade that passed Apple review, but that crashed when run on handsets that had a previously installed version of the app. Another app experienced data corruption when incoming phone calls interrupted file write operations. So you're a developer, and this happens to you. What do you do?
Developer Emanuele Vulcano issued some recommendations in a recent iPhoneSDK e-mail group post:
- First, brace yourself for user rage. Customers aren't going to be happy even though you're going to treat this situation as proactively as possible.
- Update your application description immediately. Explain what is wrong with the update and why users shouldn't upgrade. Put the word IMPORTANT in capitals.
- Submit your bug fix and then contact the escalation/approval team email from the developer help pages. Explain what happened. If your situation is critical, they can speed up the review process. Just take into account any time they'll spend before looking at your e-mail.
Absolutely devastated by this error, Mahmoud and his colleagues immediately worked on a bug fix. "We updated the code in about 15 minutes to fix this critical bug. But now it was back to the submission process." This was an update that affected critical application performance. So after submitting his BargainBin bug fix on August 6th in the afternoon, he sent an e-mail to the escalation team.
And he got results. Apple's iPhone Developer Program expedited the review, making a one-time exception to their normal process. By the evening of August 7th, the update went live in the App Store -- less than 30 hours later, rather than the 7-14 days for a normal upgrade review.
As Mahmoud writes, "Kudos to Apple. This [should make] a nice change from the 'how broken [is] the App Store approval process' articles." TUAW agrees. Way to go, Apple.
Want to read more about the story? Pop over to this write-up over at Mahmoud's company blog.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dan said 7:42AM on 8-12-2009
Wish I had read this earlier. I got my first app on the store only to find that compiling with SDK 3.0, with a 2.0 target, references the libxml2.dylib from 3.0 (which doesn't match versions on 2.x devices). Long story short, I got my app on the store, and it immediately shut down on 2.x devices. I fixed it and got the update submitted, and it took 14 days to go through.
And as usual, out of over 700 sales, only the handful of 2.x people left ratings. I'm close to 800 sales now, with 35 ratings, and 19 of them are 1-star. D'oh!
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Jerrod said 3:28PM on 8-12-2009
We had the same thing happen to us. Apple does NOT test on 2.x devices anymore. We e-mailed them and they did expedite the review, however it was a couple of days before they even took a look at the e-mail. So when you learn of a problem, jump on it immediately.
eli said 8:55AM on 8-12-2009
It amazes me that some of those issues were not found in even the simplest of test plans.... (on both the Dev side, and Apple side).
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Proxima said 12:28PM on 8-12-2009
I think the unnamed app that the author referenced was mine, Distant Suns. The version that as of this writing, in the store, is 1.3.1. This works great on OS 3.0 and above devices, but crashes to desktop on pre-3.0 systems. So that means that the iPhone guys are safe. However, the iPod folks are much less likely to fork over the $$ to upgrade, so are always one or two OS revisions behind. And as a result, they upgrade, then crash, then send nasty-gram to the author.
I tried the special email address to get the app expedited, but in my case the answer was just a form letter in response and no action. So I tried again, explaining I was losing sales, getting bad reviews, all due to a small tweak Appled made to a library that was not backwards compatible.
The I finally got a response yesterday saying they did expedite the process, but they did for the wrong app: Distant Suns-Lite, which had already been fixed.
Still waiting for another response for the real app. grrr.
(This is why the contest mentions that the app is only for 3.0 and above for the time being).
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reallycrazyguy said 1:18PM on 8-12-2009
Yay! Apple has partially fixed one of the most minor issues of the App Review process.
Next up, a web page that tells you exactly how long it's been since you submitted it, down to the second.
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Brandon said 1:23PM on 8-12-2009
Twitterific could've used this a couple months ago with the Twit-pocalypse.
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Cris said 1:40PM on 8-12-2009
Knowing nothing about the submission process, I would hope they (Apple) have a way of specifying whether an update to an app is critical or not, and those should always get priority. And of course prioritization should also take into account number number of downloads (more popular apps with critical bugs should be reviewed before ones nobody uses) and quite possibly whether the app is paid or not. People are more likely to be upset when an app they paid for doesn't work than one that is free.
Proxima, I bought your app last night... Helped me pinpoint when to sit out on my front lawn and meteor gaze. Thanks!
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