The purpose of this document is to give thunderous applause to some very patient folk. But, before I crank up the volume, I would like to share with you a small amount of history.
As soon as I (hopefully) receive permission to present some proprietary songs
Code:
Tie a Yellow Ribbon
God Bless the USA
Mansions of the Lord
I will be within a week of finishing my Universal app, "Love Song to America". The purpose of "Love Song to America" is to support all our military veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and up to and including Iraq and Afghanistan. Every last one of them, living and deceased, are true heroes and deserve all the applause and support we can generate.
The on-going process of submitting and re-submitting and re-re-submitting my mobile app to the App Store has been very, very painful and I wanted to share a glimpse of it.
I have found that all the rules in the App Guidelines manual are to describe all the official DO's and DO NOT's. The unspoken list of DO's and DON'Ts are what I am concerned about. As a strictly hypothetical example, it is entirely possible that a unspoken rule is to never, ever have need to use the More Nav Controller in a UITabController app. It is clear that no written rule stipulates that, but politically its use may be politically INcorrect.
When I submitted the app the first couple of times (without a TabBar Item pertaining to Military Support Agencies), their response essentially stated my app was nothing but a glorified web page. They were almost correct, but I countered that there are books and movie-equivalents of books. "Gone With the Wind", "Ivanhoe", "Sound of Music", and "Secretariat" come to mind. Did I forget "Cinderella" and "Snow White"? They said, in effect, "Nice Try". Their official comment was "Make Love Song more interactive". "Okay, specifically how or what do you recommend?" "Mr Love, just make it more interactive than it is". What's wrong with this picture?
I just can't deal with this, so I scoured the web and found similar experiences of many, many other developers.
I finally talked with a real human in the App Store and it was like prying wisdom teeth, but I FINALLY extracted his suggestion about the Support Agencies so veterans on the road could find out phone numbers and names to contact in case disaster struck. That idea was really, really awesome so I incorporated it … my mind was literally wrapped up in Protocols and Delegates, I didn't see the forest. But, I had to literally browbeat him to extract the idea. What's wrong with this picture?
In addition, I tried and tried to get an App Store rep to tell me how to de-pixelate all my images (one of their complaints leading to rejection). Give me the name of a specific piece of software and I'll try to use it (praying that it wasn't PhotoShop = $$$). Literally, silence. I then called directly the Apple Business section for Developers, talked to some young man who apparently took pity on me and essentially said "go to this web site and beg". The web site was Apple's Dev Support forum. I did that, and the flood gates opened and that is how I met lots of human beings with a heart. Now, that 8-minute phone call to Apple Business, what a God-send … spent hours with the App Store … but just a few minutes with Apple Business and Manna from Heaven. Do I have to ask what's wrong with this picture?
Manna in the form of:
Sandy McGuffog <mcguffogl@gmail.com>
Bill Kunz <bill@tigerbears.com>
pbear <pbear@pbear.net>
Kevin Messina <DVmagicStudios@Me.com>
All these guys displayed the patience of a million saints. Of extraordinary note is Kevin who came to the table with 20+ years as a programmer and has his own Digital Video Studio. Kevin taught me so darn much about his-res graphics and even more about Xcode. For example, he talked about png-crush (I'm embarrassed to ask, so I'll look around for its meaning). He taught me about making the project settings independent of a particular directory, in short, not hard-wiring the location. (I'm still trying to find out where $SYSROOT is defined within XCode)
Let's hear a ear-splitting round of applause for these 4 guys … I didn't hear you … oh, come on, you can do better than that! That's better.
John Love
Touch the Future! Teach!
4 very loud Atta Boys
Linear Mode
