Slashdot Mirror
The Struggles of Getting Into the App Store
itwbennett writes "You've heard the horror stories about the App Store approval process driving developers away, but what really makes it so bad isn't the 6-8 day waiting period or even rejection. What make it so bad is the lack of access to a human problem-solver at who can loosen the stranglehold of Apple's protocol machine, says Matthew Mombrea, who recounts in excruciating detail his company's experience publishing iOS apps, and, worse, updates to iOS apps."
Is failure to communicate.
I can tell you from going through numerous reviews that it's a terribly inconsistent process and has lead to a lot of frustration. I've been denied before for extremely petty reasons, only to get through on the 3rd or 4th try. Good luck trying to get an idea of how long it will take also. It has taken 45 days or longer from initial submission to being 'ready for sale'. I understand they want to keep control of their market, but their denials really interfere with my motivation to continue developing on their platform. However, on Android I've made far far less revenue on the same apps, only to see my app get 'returned' daily and probably pirated. It's worth the pain still at this point to hit iOS first and Android afterwards, especially to make 3X to 4X revenue on iOS. It's why I hope Microsoft's approvals for Win 8 and RT can be somewhere in the middle.
firestream.net
That's simple: the walled garden is where the money is.
$99/yr plus the cost of a mac to program it on.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Why is everyone clamoring for an opportunity to support The Beast?
They stabbed it with their steely knives but they Just Can't Kill The Beast, so its still the best game in town.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The article does not describe any actions they take to make the above not true, so it appears that they broke Apple's rules. What can they expect?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If only that were true...
Sure, if your app is a hit, there's no better place to be.
Unfortunately, 2/3's of iOS apps have never been downloaded, and less than 1% of iOS apps earn over $1000.
Required reading for internet skeptics
They stabbed it with their steely knives but they Just Can't Kill The Beast, so its still the best game in town.
If your app is approved, do they serve you pink champagne on ice?
As far as costs of doing business goes, $1250 is a god damn bargain.
Really wish people would stop whining about $100 development certificate. It's a negligible cost in the face of the actual App development cost.
Um. No. It's simple to set up enterprise distribution with your provisioning profile, which will allow you install any of your signed apps on any of your devices. You can even push the apps OTA.
Have a clue before you make stuff up.
Of course. We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
My experience with the app store has been totally different.
While I do embedded code for a living, I wanted to learn to write iOS apps. I am by no means a really good Obj-C programmer (but I am improving). My first hobby app suddenly looked like it might be marketable and I prepped it for app store submission.
When I got my one app rejection (on my first submission) I got an electronically generated letter that was sort of vague as to the reason. I responded to it, I got a response by a human in only an hour or two explaining in simpler terms what the issue was and what they expected. I resubmitted that afternoon and in a few days it was up and on sale. There have been no rejections over any of my subsequent updates.
I also had to push out an update about 4-5 days before the iOS 6 release due to a stupid coding error that iOS 6 would no longer let me get away with. It sat in the queue until iOS 6 was released then suddenly the app went from waiting, to in review to ready for sale in a few seconds. It came out when they did a dump of all the other iOS 6 apps. I suppose if an app has a certain number of sales and decent feedback they do not spend much time on it during reviews when crunch time is upon them. This has happened more than once - on the 5.0 update and the 4.0 update too.
Releasing at other times, I usually have 5-6 day waits. My last release (approved today) took a bit more than 8 days.
I have no complaints so far in my 2+ years on the app store.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Unless one is in an early stage startup and needs the Android revenue to afford the $1250 startup cost for iOS development ($650 Mac mini, $500 iPad, $100 certificate).
Dude, if you can't afford to invest $1250 in your startup, you can't afford to invest in your startup. The guy who rides the ice cream bike around the 'hood had a higher startup cost what with the custom cooler-bike, dry ice, ice cream, and business license.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57449358-37/ios-still-tops-android-with-app-developers/
I don't disagree with you at all; there's tons of apps that are, frankly, garbage. But even if your app is genuinely good, given the amount of "noise" in the store, you must also get lucky to be seen and discovered amongst all of the junk.
Not true. You get the compiler and debugger for free with which you can create all of the apps you want. You can also upload your own iOS apps that you write to your own iOS device. If you want to sell to others, then you need to pay the entry fee.
So, your car, your engine. If you want to provide livery service, then you need a license.
Unless one is in an early stage startup and needs the Android revenue to afford the $1250 startup cost for iOS development ($650 Mac mini, $500 iPad, $100 certificate).
Most people already have a Mac laptop quite capable of developing iOS apps.
That Android development is not free either by the same logic; you need SOME computer for that and in fact to make Eclipse tolerable it better have a goodly amount of RAM and a fast processor.
And you list $500 for an iPad - why? Brand new iPads start at $400, and you can get refurb or used iPad 2 units for less - never mind the new iPad mini which would serve just as well... or an iPod touch which is even less.
I would argue if you were doing any serious Android development you'd be spending a hell of a lot more for test devices. Otherwise if you aren't serious you can also ship to the Apple app store without testing on a single real device either.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a great excuse, until you realise that Apple's strength is derived from the applications others have written for it.
Not so, actually. iOS devices were hits before they even allowed native apps to run on them.
Unfortunately, 2/3's of iOS apps have never been downloaded, and less than 1% of iOS apps earn over $1000.
I highly doubt both of those figures.
I know a lot of friends (and myself) who make niche apps, apps they do not advertise and you would never have heard of. All of them have made over $1000 on the apps they make, and there are quite a few other companies making high profile apps that are obviously making a lot of money. There's no way that only ~7500 apps have made over $1k.
In fact this article makes a good case that the number of people making over $1k is more like 20%
Also simply because of review sites and pirates (!), I would actually claim it is nearly impossible that 2/3 of iOS applications have never seen a single download.
It sounds like you are trying to spread FUD - I salute your effort as it makes life easier for us app developers, but I just can't let bad information sit without challenge.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the app has to still work, even when there's no network connection. "always online" is not an option yet
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Last time I looked I was unable to find a way to upload an app that I wrote to my mom's iPhone without a developer license (or jailbreaking the phone, which wasn't an option since it was a work phone).
AC is right on about the enterprise distribution system. No Apple App Store involved.
I'll get off your lawn man!
I'd bet the nicer docs and generally better API save way more than $100 in developer time anyway.
I haven't offered anything that you can't easily check for yourself. It's not FUD, it's just facts.
I have checked; your argument is FUD without any facts.
That is why I provided a link to what I feel is a far more reasonable estimate, that is based on real data instead of your guesses and repetition of a "fact" you can't back up with any real data.
So far I am the only one to provide a link to verifiable information; you just claim I should "use Google" when I have and it simply disproves what you have to say.
If you have an argument to make you need to provide what you feel is proof of it. Otherwise I consider you debunked.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you actually read the terms carefully, this only authorizes you to distribute the app to internal employees. I know because we have an Enterprise license, which is pretty much entirely useless to us (as a provider of B2B services). We need to go through the standard approval process to get our app in the Volume Purchasing Program (which I imagine is what these guys in TFA actually needed).
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
The entire Apple ecosystem is way overpriced, from their consumer products to their stock, as well as all the little "apps" that run on those things.
Get out of the cabin much? I guess not when you are claiming apps that range generally in price for $1 to $5 are "way overpriced".
I would call you gramps but you have that really high UID...
I resent the idea that I'm supposed to waste so much of my time to fiddle with some little pocket device encumbered with a thousand patents to text and email people who don't have the time to communicate in real life
Only fools live to suit the devices they own.
I do none of that, instead my device is there to serve as *I* wish, providing data on demand. How much poorer a life when you do not have that ability on tap constantly.
You need to look at the big picture of what you're developing apps for. Someday people will realize and learn to work with the inherent limitations of interfacing with a little piece-of-junk device that fits in your pocket,
Funny you should mention the big picture; I have already seen it. It's a world where people find the small devices rock-solid compared to the "fiddly" world of PC's they came from. That's what you fail to understand, for non-technical users the desktop is the thing that is limiting and fiddly, the pocket devices the thing they turn to when the just want to do something without fuss and have vastly greater ability to use software to amplify human ability.
It is why I had been looking for a way to switch into mobile development full time since the early smart phone days, and jumped into it full time with the release of the iOS SDK. You don't have to be a genius to see which way the world will go, you just have to stop and consider what most people will probably do.
That is a truth that lives outside of brand; even if iOS faltered Android of WP8 would simply take over the same role. The PC is not a thing most people would want to use, tablets and mobile smartphones are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is more truth in this than it first appears. Apple wants 30% of your profits with the app - and that may be fine for retail software, but it is hardly acceptable for specialist software. Then again the app store is designed for a general audience, not for specialist software.
I think the logical conclusion is that specialist software should not be distributed over the app store. It should be side loaded.
What happened to the Shareware idea?
Not everybody who sells applications wants to make buckloads of money, there used to be hobbyists like me who invest their spare time to bring affordable, high-quality applications to people. To many of us, the shareware fee was not a means to get rich, but needed as a small incentive (and justification, e.g. to the wife...) to keep maintaining and developing the app. My main shareware app for OS X is better than most of the competition and available for $15 since the past decade -- however, you won't find it in the App store. Many thousands of great applications and a whole culture is dying with the App stores and people don't even realize how much they are loosing in terms of cash, as they are being ripped off by developers who only want fast cash and certainly aren't interested in long-term maintenance or a sustainable business model.
Moreover, when you're adding up costs, you should add up all the costs: The $650 Mac Mini and $500 will only be usable with the latest OS for about 5 years as reasonable developer machines and the certificates are needed every year. So the minimum cost for iOS development is USD 330 per year, which is 27.5$ a month. That's certainly not much for a real startup, but way too much for many shareware authors.
Add to this the hassle of going through review processes and requirements -- as if bundling, documenting, packaging and distribution weren't already enough of a pain in the ass without an app store --, the need for rewriting your app on every platform because companies more or less force you to use their proprietary toolchains, and forthcoming costs for app stores on other platforms, plus the risk of being sued by a patent troll at any time. Suddenly creating nice apps in your spare time or as a half-time job looks more like a pain than the fun it used to be. And don't be surprised if you're getting ripped off by people who want some fast return for their investment.
What happened to the Shareware idea?
Why not release a Free app, with an embedded "Donate" button that triggers an in-app-purchase? Voila, Shareware.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Whatever you're selling, it's way too expensive if you can throw $1250 out the window as the "cost of doing business" as some freelancer developing an "app" that is supposed to run on some fiddly little device. The entire Apple ecosystem is way overpriced, from their consumer products to their stock, as well as all the little "apps" that run on those things. My pocketbook is staying firmly closed when it comes to anything Apple.
Haha, you're on the wrong planet. Businesses regularly through way more than that away as a cost of doing business. Need an artist to make a 3D model? Better pay $2000 for 3DS Max for a year then. Need an artist to draw your UI? Better pay $700 for a photoshop license then. Need a computer to do your development on? Better pay $500 then. Want a desk to work on and a chair to sit on? $200. In the grand scheme of things, $1250 is a pittance to a business, especially when $650 of that is for a computer, which they'd have to buy anyway.
The other platform has roughly the same barriers –you need to spend $500 on a computer, you need to spend $200 on a device to test on.
Decent chance (being a programmer and all) you'll already own a Mac capable of running Xcode, so the $650 is not needed.
Sure there's a reason... The reason is that they've developed a *huge* software suite for doing the development on, and would have to spend millions porting it. Add to that that the iOS simulator is litterally directly calling the same OS X APIs for an awful lot of the calls in iOS, and you're talking about porting half of OS X to windows and linux!
Oh? We can distribute iOS apps on something other than the app store? Your "toll road" happens to be the only road in existence.
We did actually consider this, and decided it wasn't the way to go. Our primary concern being that we run the risk of losing our developer license.
It would be fine if we were developing an app for a single client, which they would own the rights to on delivery. But what if we have multiple clients who want the same system? We could have each client add us as an authorized developer so we could sign the code using their certificates, but this is clearly in contradiction to to Apple's app store model, and probably would not end well for us were they to find out what we were up to (and there is a paper trail).
After weighing the risks, we decided it would be best to brave the approval process for the Volume Purchasing Program. As it turns out, it was a good decision.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Even if you have a computer, if you want to get started with iOS application development, you have to buy another computer, specifically one manufactured by Apple.
Really? I was perfectly able to continue using my existing Mac.