Ask HN: expedited iTunes review, what does it mean? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: expedited iTunes review, what does it mean?

2 pointsdmitryame14 comments

Last week we submitted an application for review to the iTunes store and it was approved within a day. We later found a bug in the app, and decided to submit it through expedited review process. It's been more than a day and it still waiting for the review. What's the point of the "expedited" then? Should I just use a normal review process to get better results next time?

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Am I the only one who can see the problem here? So far I've gotten the responses that sound like the following: "dude, this is your own fault" or "this is how Apple works, their expedited review is always faster because it's called expedited". In the meanwhile, I'm still waiting, while waiting -- loosing my clients. Perhaps, this is life, and there is nothing that can be done.

Day 3 -- still waiting for the "expedited" review to start. My app is still crashing in prod.

By the end of day 3, finally, it was reviewed and approved. After all, as it was suggested by some, the weekend does not seem to matter. Still very disappointing that the "expedited" review took 3!!! times longer than the regular one which happened just a day prior.

It's for urgent updates, like a crashing bug or time-sensitive stuff and only done at Apple's discretion, they likely declined doing it twice so quickly:

https://developer.apple.com/support/app-review/

Yes, this is exactly what we have -- the app is crashing, the customers are not able to use the app. How did that happen? Tough to say -- the app passed all the tests before and after the release, but, somehow it still crashes on some devices.

What I forgot to mention, was that the normal submission time is variable and may be up to weeks. You saw them at their ~fastest originally.

Yes, but that's exactly my point. If current review time is 1 day, should it mean that expedited review currently should be shorter than that?

It's just a higher priority queue, they can both be fast but the expedited review will always be fast.

In my case the expedited is already 2!!!! times slower. And it's still not over. The review process has not even started for the "expedited" request. Just a day earlier the normal request was already processed and approved. I really appreciate that Apple has worked hard on shortening the regular queue. Is it time for them to start optimizing the "expedited" process so it does happen quicker than the regular one?

Perhaps they should consider removing the "expedited" process altogether to avoid confusion. Or perhaps allow a single request to go in both queues at the same time to see which one wins. I know, it's just me who is having the problem. How do I explain it to my customers who are fleeing my product?

The only appstore that rapidly publishes apps is Google Play, which has a human-review process that takes place usually within hours.

The Amazon App Store routinely takes weeks, and often won't even process revenue or download data for long delays.

The iOS App Store can take up to weeks too.

This is how they work. How you mitigate crashes reaching production must account for how they work. For me that meant adding a QA process before publishing. Unit tests can also help.

I appreciate your advice. But things still fall through cracks. We do have automated tests in place, we have ran manual regression test before and after the release on test devices -- still, the crash happened for 2 most critical clients of ours. Yes, we are going to increase the testing etc, but testing does not solve the problem, it just decreases the chance of the problems to happen. This is not the issue I was trying to bring up here on this thread. The issue is that if the "expedited" review takes significantly longer (perhaps not consistently), is it a red flag for Apple to do something about improving it. If the process was designed to address the critical client's issues -- it currently does not work. I'm loosing my clients and Apple is not there to help. If I only knew what I'm getting into, I would have submitted through regular process, because, as of right now, it takes only a day for review to complete.

Maybe they have the weekend off?

It was submitted Friday in the afternoon. In my experience, they usually do approve the apps even over the weekend. Oh, I see your point, perhaps the "expedited" is a different team and they may have the weekend off? I wish I knew that. I would have definitely submitted as regular.

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