The curious case of our iOS app (Prey) (opens in new tab)

so i used to have a lot more sympathy for people who got fucked over by apple in this manner. and i guess i still do feel sorry for them, but my main emotion when reading stories like this nowadays is an intense sense of frustration that developers continue to deal with the apple/ios ecosystem at all. it's always been an abusive relationship, and nothing looks likely to change about that, so why do it? is the money really that good?

My first job out of uni was for a startup in Melbourne, Australia. After 3 years the place was running out of cash. The company was betting its entire future on this iPhone app that we were developing for them (iPhone 3G era). It was finished in about 3 months and we submitted it to the app store. Apple had taken over 2 months to reject the application and the process to get it approved took almost 6 months. This was a voip app and Apple's reasoning was that it was potentially competing with their own products. By the time it was approved the company was pretty much finished and I'd taken up another job.

As crappy as the whole process can be it is still a million times better than pre-iPhone Nokia. We had to pay thousands of dollars to get a dongle license just to be able to develop for Nokia phones. After you finish you have to pay money and submit it to an "approved" test house so they can run through a bunch of test cases. If your app failed you had to pay again and resubmit.

That's frustrating. Especially since the Kindle app falls under the category of "paid content is available, but no references are available in-app".

With all of the great improvements Apple has made to the App Store submission process, it's frustrating there's still such inconsistency and so few ways to speak with someone reasonable. From what I hear the review team is busting their asses off, but it's still frustrating (and a bit baffling) for something that represents such a large part of the success of iOS.

Honest question here: Why would I use this product instead of Apple's free "Find My iPhone"?

Can someone please explain to me why Apple still has yet to be investigated for anti-trust?

Prey iOS app dev here,

The app is technically ready to be submitted I'm waiting on some last graphic details that need to be designed yet, so as the post says any day next week we will submit the app which will be diligently tweeted (@preyproject) and hopefully (with Apple's blessing) it will become available on the last days of this month.

In the meantime, you can check what we've been doing here: https://github.com/prey/prey-ios-client. *

*As you may note, it doesn't compile since the project includes the In-App Purchases classes which are private and part of a submodule. Delete those references and you'll be good to hack :)

We had a similar experience with an app last year. Submitted, rejected for small reasons, submitted again, no word for four weeks despite constant attempts to contact Apple, then a phone call. Turns out they also have some rules they don't publish. I asked for their explanation in writing and they were unwilling to give it so I had to go to my Board of Directors with nothing to show for why the app was not approved for weeks. Had to rip out a huge part of it and recode over a two week 18 hour day madness before being approved in 20 minutes after submission (they do help out when you bend over).

As for the rule.....basically, unless you are the New York Times, you are not allowed to use their recurring subscription payment model. It's "public" per se, but they don't let anyone use it unless you are a massive publishing company and fit into their preferred business model.

My app, Cocoyon is built explicitly for the purpose of tracking the location of your friends in real-time. We initially got the exact same "Your app does not include features that require persistent location." rejection.

What the really wanted from us a was a battery usage warning in the description.

Regarding the point about storm trooper imagery, these images have to be licensed by LucasArts etc. This is why even if I drew Donald Duck and put it in the public domain, you are unable to use it in your product without licensing the necessary rights for it.

Its instances like this that reveal the inherent problems associated with app stores tightly controlled by a single company.

iOS applications must be bringing really huge money if people are ready to put up with this kind of abuse.

I love the complaint about data. Oh, the app is trying to conserve battery, but the explanation isn't explicit enough so we'll count that as a flaw.