Apple's Joswiak: Wundrbar is Very Special | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Joswiak: Wundrbar is Very Special

blog.wundrbar.com

37 pointsgarbowza15 comments

Title is misleading: it made me think Joswiak had specifically mentioned Wundrbar. A somewhat more accurate title would be: Wundrbar's experience with the iPhone app approval process.

I think Apple's statistics are probably highly misleading.

I doubt that 95% of all submissions are approved. That's probably 95% of all apps are eventually approved, perhaps after several rejections.

The 98% statistic probably means of the submissions that are approved, 98% take < 1 week.

While Apple's app approval process has been well-established as opaque and cruelly arbitrary, no one can be surprised that this app, of all apps, should have taken a long time to review. Almost by definition it steps on an awful lot of toes; I'm sure that if Apple has, as I think they've been documented, an interest in preserving the use space of their own apps AS WELL AS certain high-powered partners, then surely no one at Wundrbar can be surprised that their app, which in many ways is nothing more than a series of front-ends to other people's data, might have raised more than one eyebrow.

Has anyone else noted that his name bears an uncanny resemblance to a blend of "Jobs" and "Wosniak"?

Yes. And they seem to call him "Joz" = "Jobs" + "Woz"

Wundrbar is like 70 apps in 1. Maybe they were testing each app separately?

When I submitted my app, Apple actually called ME. Kind of ridiculous, but it was pretty cool. They were super friendly and wanted me to make some quick changes before approval, which I did, and it was rather seamless experience.

The code signing ritual...now that was a different story.

"Meanwhile, for individual developers, the process disproportionately favors development of so-called 'crap apps.' Why should developers invest time in developing complex apps that might take months to review, when they could develop simple apps of limited utility that are more likely to get into the App Store in a day or two?"

This point seems spot on. Has anyone else been afraid to devote months to an app for the same reason? Seems like a scary investment given that you will just be subject to Apple's whims indefinitely.

My "crap app" got rejected for being of "minimal functionality" even though it duplicates the functionality of a physical device found in many restrooms in Japan, so it seems Apple is indiscriminately applying their policies regardless of application quality, leading to some making it through and others not. Case in point:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/03/16/apple-rejects-free-...

I would hardly call this as having "minimal functionality". Yet Apple thinks so. But neither I nor Apple should have that call beyond apps that are illegal, overly resource intensive or malicious. The market should be able to decide. This behavior hinders development across the board, especially when you have no insight into why an app is rejected or what it will take to get it approved. Will Shipley has a great post on his blog about this very issue:

http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/09/iphone-app-store-let-mark...

Wait, I thought only 96% of apps got approved at all.

96% get approved, of that 96%, 98% supposed get approved within a week.

Is it unreasonable for me to think that 98% of them should be approved in 1 business day?

Probably.

Even at some steady state, an app has to come into their queue and be assigned to someone. Each of those folks is probably already busy. And the approval process requires going through all the major features of the app, checking for UI gaffes, profanity, etc.

So even if they had a perfect process, you'd imagine it'd take two or three days.

I think this is mostly because wundrbar has similar functions as the new SpotLight in iPhone OS 3.0.

Huh? Spotlight lets you search your music, mail, notes, calendars, and a few other things stored on your phone. Wundrbar lets you search various services on the internet. There's zero overlap, AFAIK.

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