carpeaqua by Justin Williams

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Joe Hewitt on why Apple should eliminate the AppStore review process:

The fact is this: Apple does not have the means to perform thorough quality assurance on any app. This is up to the developer. We have our own product managers and quality assurance testers, and we are liable to our users and the courts if we do anything evil or stupid.

I agree with most everything Joe says, but I am not as against the review process as a policy as he is. My problem with the process is the turnaround time. 14 days to publish any update to our users is ludicrous. Apple needs to ramp up the team behind the review process and cut that time down to 48-72 hours at most.

The extended review time is detrimental to users and developers as it prevents them from getting smaller point releases that may contain useful bug fixes because the lead time just isn’t worth it when a point release is nearby. I have a finalized copy of FitnessTrack 1.5 sitting on my desktop waiting to be submitted. I can’t submit it until Apple accepts 1.1.2 because I will be pushed to the back of the queue if I update the binary and because iTunes Connect does not allow you to modify the build number if you do reject and replace a binary.

By comparison, there was an issue in the Check Off 4.0 binary yesterday. I found it, resolved it and pushed the update to my users within 3 hours. That is how software updates in the Internet age are supposed to work.

Posted on August 25th, 2009 in AppStore