Jake Behrens

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notes Giving credit where credit is due.

Two days ago I was contacted by a client of mine saying that Apple had contacted them about their app that was in review. As most of you are thinking, my first thought was, “crap…what’d they reject?” but much to my surprise it wasn’t a rejection. It should have been. I can say all I want about philosophies on the App Store process in general, but they would have been right to reject it as it broke their terms (unknowingly to me at the time).

Apple called my client and said two things were holding it up, one was using an outdated version of Three20 that made private API calls and the other was some marketing speak that they wanted altered for clarification.

They told my client that after the changes were made to the app: re-submit it and email them, so they could put it up for review immediately instead of going back into the queue (wow).

I’m left with a few thoughts from this.

1. They called. They didn’t have to do that. At all. They could have rejected it and we were at fault for using code that makes private API calls.

2. This shows that they’re listening. They are hearing the talk from developers and are starting to take more time to care and feed us. That’s huge as far as I’m concerned.

So you can whine and cry about the process in general, but for the volume of submissions that they have, taking that little bit of time to reach out means a lot.

I’ve heard so much negativity to the App Store process lately that I just want to remind everyone that they’re adapting and listening to us even when we think they’re not. And without them making the incredible device that the iPhone is in the first place, many of us wouldn’t even have the jobs we have and love right now.