A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone
2 Rejections and 42 Days of Waiting
Last week we received an e-mail from Apple’s App review team notifying us that after 14 days of review, our latest update to iCombat Lite would not be accepted because of “inappropriate keywords.” The offending keyword was “wii tank,” and we had chosen this because many of our users have told us that our game reminded them of the tank mini game that is part of Wii Play.
While we knew not to use current iPhone app names as keywords, it had never in a million years occurred to us that “wii” might be problematic. In Apple’s words, they “cannot post applications that contain irrelevant keywords in their search criteria” and suggested that “it would be appropriate to remove ‘wii tank.’” Interesting since they: 1) had already approved our iCombat paid version with the same keyword, 2) have approved an app with Wii in the title, and 3) they had already rejected iCombat Lite two weeks prior for some other reason without mentioning any problems with the keywords.
What is so frustrating about this latest round of trivial rejections is that the app review “feedback” seems to always come on day 14 (at the earliest), and happens serially. To give you an idea, we first submitted iCombat Lite update 1.1 on September 8th, 41 days ago! After being rejected for an issue Apple reported with the code on September 22nd, and spending several days working on replicating the bug (which we never even managed to), we resubmitted the exact same keywords and code on September 28th.
On October 12th (14 days later) we received notice that the entire update would need to be resubmitted because of the “wii tank” keyword. Had anything changed from the approved iCombat Paid version or the previously rejected lite version? Nothing at all…and so we deleted the words, resubmitted and for the third time started another 14 day approval cycle. All in all, if we are lucky we expect the iCombat Lite update to be approved on October 26th, just 48 days to get to market (42 if we subtract the days we took to work on the first rejection).
Reasons to Avoid Developing for the iPhone
Ignoring how illogical this last keyword rejection has been, the real damage of the current app approval process is that it has created a slow and arbitrary development environment that does nothing but discourage indie developers. The biggest issues with this setup are:
- Slower development cycles – As if figuring out what users wanted wasn’t hard enough, now add a 14 day approval delay which quickly turns into 1 month with any rejection and you have a buffer that really starts to isolate developers from their users and this constrains the feedback – iteration loop
- Product/ Market fit is replaced with Product/ Apple fit – To use Andreesen’s advice (worth a read), entrepreneurs should “do whatever is required to achieve product/ market fit.” Here the only thing that matters is finding what users want and giving it to them. Yet with Apple as the gatekeeper success is not determined by the market but first by whether Apple will LET you play in its garden. This perverts the goals of the developer and ultimately reduces the chances that an efficient product/ market fit can occur. You could even argue that on the off chance that you find an exceptional product/ market fit you are at even a higher risk of being cannibalized or pulled or copied by Apple itself.
- Impossible ROI calculations – If you are trying to run a business based off of App development, how can you possibly calculate the return on your investment when you have no control over your launch to market? Unless you are ngmoco with funding from Kleiner Perkins then how can you build a business on top of such uncertainty (market and execution risks should be more than enough to contend with without having to worry about the d-bag app reviewer risk)
- App approval amnesia and the lack of a fast track system – What seems to be happening all too often is that previously approved apps, after waiting weeks in the queue, get rejected for features that had already been approved in past releases. This approval amnesia combined with being lumped in with new app approvals creates a developer disincentive to work on refining applications. Does it make sense when iCombat Lite, having been live for 3 months with 100k installs and no complaints, suffers a 40+ day delay because it is being forced to the back of the line over and over again to wait amongst what is new crapware? The sooner these apps can get updates out the sooner they can deliver high quality experiences to Apple users.
All of these factors serve to undermine developer confidence, reduce the quality of apps in the store, and ultimately choke app development activity. Developers are already looking to other platforms and are limiting investment as the environment has simply become too unpredictable to work with. Sure Apple has its reasons, namely pushing its 85k or 100k or 250k apps commercials to prove it has the most evolved app ecosystem versus its peers. But if Apple doesn’t fix these problems soon, those numbers will begin to mean less and less, and at some point the number of apps in the App store will be about as meaningful as the number of videos uploaded to YouTube.
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Anyone know what’s happened to The App Farm or iCombat?
Compared to other handsets, developing for the iPhone is a dream, even with the flaws that you’ve listed. Developing under BREW, for example, can cost $15K just in testing costs across all the platforms, with no guarantee of passing. And you’re very, very lucky if the testing can even be completed in under 14 days. Dealing with AT&T, T-Mobile and others is not even remotely as smooth and easy as dealing with Apple, and much more costly.
Dylan — I have to disagree with your “quality control makes things better” point. Some of us remember when AOL made the exact same argument, so it’s worth looking at that example:
1) A better user interface is a winner, until enough people figure out how to use a more raw, more open (but a lot less expensive) one. Once a majority of people got past the fear of opening a browser, the AOL model collapsed.
1a) The collapse of AOL then opens a new market for filtering apps and other protections as the service is unbundled.
2) There’s a lot of cr@p on the ‘Net and always has been. The AOL quality control was supposed to filter this a bit… especially for children. Ultimately, this failed for several reasons: AOL could not keep up with the explosive growth of content (Apple cannot keep up with the explosive growth of apps) and AOL would/could not take on liability if something got past them. This latter is the real killer in Apple’s argument against Google Voice: they claim that a rogue app can crash a cell tower, but they do not accept liability if an approved app does so.
3) Monopolies act is arbitrary ways and people therefore don’t like monopolies. The arbitrariness of Apple’s review process just begs for regulation from a populist government. ISPs know this: look at the net neutrality debate (and the regulatory approvals at the time of AOL’s merger)! AT&T knows this for sure… since phone companies know all about monopolies and regulation… and has therefore isolated Apple in the Google Voice controversy.
For those of you who have not read it, I recommend Rick Chapman’s book “In Search of Stupidity”. The greatness of many (software) companies is less about excellence than about avoiding stupidity by learning from past idiots. I expect the app store will feature in Rick’s third edition of the book.
@Michael Wales
Learn to read? He didn’t use the name on the title of his game.
Sorry to hear about that..
The point was not that he used Wii as a keyword @ Michael Wales..
The point is Apple runs it’s software approval process like the Soviet Union ran its government.
Unfortunately game dev must be native but I for one will never develop for the iPhone natively again.. Safari is powerful enough to handle a lot of apps which could have gone that route instead, i.e. Google Voice..
The only thing more tiring than Apple rejections is the inevitable blog entry about it, claiming complete ignorance and innocence.
You realize that Apple doesn’t have one super reviewer looking at all the apps? And even if that were true, it doesn’t mean that issues don’t change over time.
You are living in the real world, get used to it. It sure seems that a lot of people have this fantasy where everything is perfect, nobody makes mistakes, everybody is on the same page, etc…
The best thing you said is that you should allow at least a month for the review process.
Of course, Apple should do things better, as a developer myself I understand that. Yours and the millions blog posts on exactly the same subject have also covered that area enough I think.
So stop your whinging, please.
As a developer, I agree with many of the points you put forth. But as a consumer (or even as Apple), I see it as quality control you don’t find elsewhere, which betters the iPhone ecosystem as a whole.
For example, if your first (technical/bug) rejection had not happened (not withstanding that you weren’t able to reproduce it), it would pave the way to buggy apps, which leads to an overall poor experience for the customer. If you allow trademarked words in the keywords when is it right to deny them?
From a developer point of view, I agree that the lack of consistency and rejection turnaround times is maddening – as you illustrated – but with 40+ reviewers (2 per app), I can see how it is difficult to systematically judge apps with the exact same policy.
From a business perspective, I also agree that is is increasingly difficult to justify developing for the iPhone unless you have either: outstanding marketing, a business model that does not rely App Store revenue, or incredible luck.
Sorry to hear about your Approval Hell experience. :\ We have (and continue to) experienced the same frustrations. I candidly don’t think the problem is reviewers being out to get developers, so much as new, random, and lame policies being handed down at arbitrary times forcing new builds (of previously approved apps) to be rejected.
To clarify I was not using it in the title of my game but in one of the keywords used to describe the game. These serve to help users find a game based on their search criteria. I obviously would not have used it in my title although another app actually has been approved with the name Wii Games. Thanks for the post!
@Michael Wales
And I understand that you went off the assumption that they already approved one app with “Wii” in the title. It still doesn’t make it right (or very smart) for that matter. Your game should be good enough to stand up on it’s own merit, not ride the coattails of another’s success.
Not to devalue the overall theme of this post, because it’s true – the “closed garden” of the App Store is a lose-lose for everyone, including Apple.
But, why in the world would you think it’s okay to use “Wii” in the title of your game? It’s a registered trademark belonging to Nintendo and you are attempting to profit from it.
In this case, be thankful Apple denied your application – you were setting yourself for a lawsuit. Suck it up, learn from the experience, rename your application and get it up there so we can all try it out!