App Store Lessons: App Emergencies

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!

Twitterific could've used this a couple months ago with the Twit-pocalypse.

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.

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).

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).

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!