Late last month, after a few months of being “In Review”, one of my apps was approved in 24 hours. I was happy. And then I was angry. But not against Apple… I had forgotten the last little tweak I needed for this app which was to remove the Status Bar. Any iPhone developer will agree that this is simply a matter of ticking a box. So, I immediately proceeded to fixing that and submitting an update to the app with that little box ticked. This was on November 6th. To this day, I am still waiting for Apple to approve this minor change in my app. Luckily, this was not a big issue for this app.

However, I’ve also read other developers’ experiences and in some cases, I find the approval period for updates to be too long and frankly unnecessary. When you release an app, you know it’ll take weeks before Apple approves it. I’ve learned to live and accept that although in some cases, I can see this as being a big cost on the developer’s front. When the app is finally on sale, you starting buzzing about it, people download it, and most of the feedback you get is going to be negative because people don’t bother with positive feedback. Usually, the feedback you receive is related to something you can quickly fix on the client side (ie/ the app itself).

Imagine if you could fix that bug and have the update available the next day. The people complaining about your app might appreciate your response time and take some time to change their rating or praise your app. That would be really nice… and this is how it was before the AppStore came along. If you distribute your app on your own site, you can release an update whenever you’d like.

The reality of the matter is that people will badly rate your app, and 3 or 4 weeks later, when you’ve fixed the issue they described, they might have done any of the following or any combination of the following :

1) Uninstalled your app and hence don’t know about the update
2) Spread negative reviews about your app to their friends and colleagues
3) Lost complete interest in seeing your app work

This is sad. From the app user’s perspective, I cannot blame them for any of the above. As a developer, it’s extremely frustrating to put in effort and time to fix things quickly to make your users happy only to realize that Apple is going to be the roadblock to your reputation despite your dedication and investment (at least $2000) to program on the iPhone.

Dear Apple, please fix this. Stop damaging your market, our reputations, and annihilating our efforts to create a better user experience for your hardware.

Interesting read (Thanks to Geppy): http://infinite-labs.net/openletter/

Download (59KB)

Update: A concise installation guide can be found here.

Update 2: The badge has been updated and that nasty gap is now fixed!

Update 3 (04/09/09): Apple has gotten in touch with me and has provided a reasonable explanation for the delay... I will post about this later on.

On June 29th, after having worked intensely for two days to deliver an iPhone app to a pressed client, I submitted my first iPhone app to iTunes Connect. As of today, this app is still "In Review". The direct result of this was the client's decision to simply drop all future plans of iPhone development. The delay in getting a response from Apple is very... upsetting. I'm just waiting now, curious to discover what future surprises lie ahead of me (See Update 3).

In the meantime, I decided to create an 'App "In Review" Badge' for website owners and developers to use as they see fit. It's free, simple-to-use, and will hopefully allow developers to communicate their frustration towards review delays in a simpler and more passive approach.

Where does this badge work?
This badge works in any environment capable of rendering HTML pages and parsing Javascript. It has been tested in FireFox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Warning: In IE, the Badge will NOT have rounded edges.

What is this badge?
The little badge is built entirely in HTML. It can look like any of the following badges depending on how long ago your app was submitted.

How do I install the badge?
There are two ways of installing this badge. You can either download the source files and run the scripts from your server or directly link to nickology.com.

» QUICK INSTALL

• In the <HEAD> section your page, place the following line of code:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.nickology.com/projects/app_in_review_badge/v1/nickology_app_badge.js"></script>
  

• Skip to PLACE BADGES

» INSTALL ON YOUR OWN SERVER

1. Download Nickology App-In-Review (96 kb) files. You will need to unzip this file and upload the folder nj_app_badge to the desired location on your server.
2. In the source code of the page you wish to display the badge on, link the scripts that you just uploaded:

     <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/app_in_review_badge/nickology_app_badge.js"></script>
     <script type="text/javascript">
       NJ_setPath('http://www.nickology.com/js/app_in_review_badge/');
     </script>
   

   Replace http://www.nickology.com/js/app_in_review_badge/ and /js/app_in_review_badge/ with the path on your server. If you install this on your server, you must set the path where the directory is located by calling the function NJ_setPath().
3. Go to PLACE BADGES

» PLACE BADGES

1. Once you have completed one of the two methods above, you can set up the locations of one or more badges on your page. For every badge that you wish to place, you must create a DIV element like so and give it a unique id attribute:

     <div id="counter1"></div>
   

   You can also place several badges, anywhere on your page:
   

» FINAL SETUP
Lastly, you must set up each badge that is on your page. To do so, you must add the following block of code anywhere on your page (but preferably in the <HEAD> section. Here is an example of what this might look like:

<script type="text/javascript">
	NJ_addBadge('counter 1','20090607','','','');
</script>

The values passed to the function NJ_addBadge are:

1. ID - The ID of the DIV tag that you wish to convert to a badge
2. Date of Submission - The date on which you submitted your iPhone application in YYYYMMDD form. For example, July 15th 2009 is 20090715
3. Date of Response - The date on which you received a final response from Apple. This can be left blank if you still have not received a response.
4. Response - The actual response you received. Put "1" for approved, and "0" for rejected. This can be left blank if you still have not received a response.
5. URL - Turn the badge into a link. For example, once your app gets approved, you can add a direct link to the AppStore. Or, in the meantime, you can simply provide a permalink to a page or blog entry dedicated to your app. This is always optional.

» FINAL SOLUTION

Please see this page.

» NOTES

• There is a debug mode that can be enabled. If you are experiencing problems, enable this mode and you might get some error messages to guide you:
  
  

  <script type="text/javascript">
      NJ_showDebugInfo();
  </script>
  

• This badge is released under the Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

App "In Review" Badge by Nicolas Jouannem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 France License.
Based on a work at www.nickology.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.nickology.com/.

Feel free to leave a comment should you have any questions or would like a link to your site on this page.