A brief bit of venting: I've been trying to get a significant update to one of my apps through the approval process for a few weeks now, and the App Store folks are driving me crazy. It's just a little guessing game that replicates the 1940's ESP experiments J.B. Rhine did at Duke University (it's a bit of a ritual I have, the first program I ever wrote was done on a hand-me-down-and-reallly-obsolete Apple IIe in 5th grade, and it was a ESP test, so now I often write a variation of that as my "Hello World" when learning).
Anyhow, the app was my first App Store submission two years ago, and had some rather nasty newbie coder bugs. I've been meaning to fix it for ages, but have focused on more lucrative / interesting projects. I finally re-wrote the thing into a proper universal app last month, fixed some horrible multi-touch bugs that make dragging the little cards around the screen on the currently shipping app pretty messy, and added a pile of features just for the heck of it. I'll also point out that this app (Psychic Card Test) was the first of the sort on the store, and although a million others have shown up, they're all even worse than mine. So, especially after the update, this little app will be the best-of-breed (though the bar is set rather low I concede).
Do they approve it, thinking, "Thank God, we've got like 30 of these stupid things on the store and they all make me slightly embarrassed to be human, finally something that's merely mediocre!" No. They reject it for questionable and obscure reasons, like the integrated open feint screens didn't originally support both Portrait orientations (that's a bit tricky to do by the way, and since open feint is someone else's code, took a while to sort out). Anyhow, for an app that makes almost no money, it sure is taking a lot of time to do the honorable thing and spruce it up.
Don't you wish the reviewers would send you feed back like this: "Hey, your open feint screens don't rotate properly, but this release is 10x better than the crap on the store now, so we're letting it through. Next update better fix that though, or it will be rejected." Sigh. I know, it's a bit unrealistic, but it sure would be nice.
Sometimes the reviewers can be a pain in the ***.... I got my iAd version rejected for some "good" reasons (2 problems) but what they failed to tell me is that my screenshots also had a slight "problem" so I had to wait a third time for them to recheck my screenshots (the issue in my screenshot was in the original submission but they never said anything at that time..)
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No kidding. I had a recent experience where I tried to update my app, Gold Tracker, for about a month. It was just a few bug fixes, but Apple rejected 4 times.
1st rejection: Didn't orient to portrait-upside down, in addition to portrait.
2nd rejection: PickerViews can not go all the way to the edge of the screen. (Apple already approved the prior version and made no mention of this. I also get a call from Apple letting me know that if I just sized them down a bit, everything would be fine.)
3rd rejection: PickerViews must be put into a PopoverView.
4th rejection: App crashes at launch. (I have no idea why they rejected it...I submitted the very same release after they rejected this one, and it was finally approved.)
Adding multiplie orientation support to my OF supported OpenGL game was a nitemare. But I had to do it. They WILL reject any iPad app that can't autorotate.
I've been trying to get a significant update to one of my apps through the approval process for a few weeks now, and the App Store folks are driving me crazy. It's just a little guessing game that replicates the 1940's ESP experiments J.B. Rhine did at Duke University
I thought you were comparing the app review process to an ESP experiment at first.. which would also be appropriate at times
I thought you were comparing the app review process to an ESP experiment at first.. which would also be appropriate at times
haha. It does sort of read that way now that you mention it. If only I could actually read the minds of certain folks in Cupertino, maybe I'd get better results.
Adding multiplie orientation support to my OF supported OpenGL game was a nitemare. But I had to do it. They WILL reject any iPad app that can't autorotate.
My iPad version doesn't and it was approved (and so was an update I submitted later)
__________________ My Games: My Blog 13" Macbook Air 1.7Ghz Core i5, 4GB DDR3, Intel HD Graphics 3000 iPhone 4S - PSPGo - 3DS - Wii - PS3 - 360
Adding multiplie orientation support to my OF supported OpenGL game was a nitemare. But I had to do it. They WILL reject any iPad app that can't autorotate.
i am interested in this statement as i am planning on releasing an ipad app that only displays in landscape mode. it is all fullscreen quicktime so i have no reason to support any other orientation.
have you had any personal experiences with app rejection for this reason?
i am interested in this statement as i am planning on releasing an ipad app that only displays in landscape mode. it is all fullscreen quicktime so i have no reason to support any other orientation.
have you had any personal experiences with app rejection for this reason?
Unless something has changed very recently, it's not generally true that Apple will automatically reject apps that don't run in all orientations. Even the iPad Human Interface Guidelines say that it's sometimes necessary to restrict the orientations. They do give a list of criteria you should follow if you do so, though, such as being sure to support 180 degree rotations in all cases.
I think the main point is that there's a general expectation that your app should run in all orientations unless there's clearly a compelling reason to prevent it from doing so. "Compelling" is obviously open to interpretation, and Apple's certainly been inconsistent in its review criteria, so I'm sure there are examples of similar cases where one's been accepted and another rejected. It's probably best to at least think hard about whether you could support all orientations, even if it requires some redesign of your UI, but given the high numbers of apps I'm seeing that are restricted to just portrait or just landscape, there definitely doesn't seem to be any hard rule about supporting all orientations.
App Store reviewers sure think small
Linear Mode
