> Author says that he develops app in his free time, did not have time to push it to app store properly and that he has 200 beta testers. Apps with a public invitation link for testing are common and if the delay is the problem here, then Apple should have said so.
I agree that Apple’s lack of communication with developers is a massive problem, but I also think there are a couple of gaps in his story that need filling in.
TestFlight betas expire after a short amount of time – one or two months, if I remember correctly. He says the application has been available through TestFlight for three years. This means that he will have had to publish a new build well over a dozen times to keep it active for this amount of time. And if it’s already on TestFlight with external testers, it’s really not much effort at all to push it live. The build is already in Apple’s system – you've got to fill out a couple more form fields and click submit.
So looking at it that way… he gets hundreds of users, keeps pushing new builds to those users on a regular basis for three years, but never submits it to go through the public App Store review process. If I were Apple, I’d think he was probably trying to bypass the review process as well. Apps with a public invitation link are common, but this behaviour is not.
But yes, they should talk to him about it and this is a failure on Apple’s part even if he is acting suspiciously. I’ve been saying for a while that Apple need a VP of Developer Relations to take ownership of this type of thing, because it seems clear nobody owns it at the moment.