Sad news again!
Most of you already know about the stupid pull of Rooms from the stores (for which I still, after so many days, have no official answer/reason).
And most of you also have read the story when I tried to get it back in, absurdly needed another “complete review” for this and so decided to put my recent (ready) new multitasking feature into it already. It worked fine here for weeks but Apple though said NO and rejected it …
So far so bad.
After I removed the voip-mode as Apple asked me to, I’ve again put it as update up for review. The review started some hours later already. But until Wednesday there was again no response or anything. iTunesConnect said someone is still “testing” it – for days.
Wednesday I got a call then, to remove the VOIP mode… ?! oO I told him that it was already removed, since that was the reason for the first reject. So he moved on saying to continue the review now.
Now here comes the worst part:
After some really bad mails, and questions which both never got any reaction. (Hmm, honestly 99% of the mails ever get any real persons responses as far as I can tell).
Until… TODAY!
Today I got this email:
YEY! I though at first… But strangly when I woke up here in germany, there was still no evidence of my app in the store?! Although the mail also states that this could take up to 24h, it normally is available within only some hours for updating and nearly instant when searching directly. So something seemed wrong here…
So I logged in into iTunesConnect for a little check and found this:
What the hell? First I told myself to calm down, this may just be the ‘old’ state and was not refreshed yet. But then I looked at the version number. Hmm, it’s the new one. So I clicked on ‘View Details’ and went on to the History in there…
And you may just wanna guess what I found:
I REALLY don’t know what Apple is doing here. Is this happening automatically on some reason? Is this just fun? Is there ANY reason at all or just another bug now that they working on iTunesConnect again?
I REALLY don’t know what to do now. Mails won’t be answered anyway. Another review/update seems useless. No direct calls possible for getting answers… Nothing… Should I finally just give up then and start developing for android or something? 
I JUST wanted to finish my bachelor thesis those weeks and this app was actually all I had for paying the bills… That’s just not fair and just too much for one person!
Especially while Rooms was in the Paid Top 100 in most countries and even Paid Top 25 in Germany quite stable for a loooong time now. I can’t imagine when it gets back into the store some day but after all that time completely removed without any rank at all… That would mean months of hard work for finally: nothing…
That’s what you finally GET when you were one of the first developers when the app store was born!
You help making it successful selling 33.000 apps over the months/years and then you just get a KICK without any “farewell” (or listening to your emails/questions) …
PS: @Apple – For sure, I did your developer survey like you asked for it by mail those days – and I was honest an polite – but you and me both know that you never gonna change all this and we both know it was just a promotion for the new iTunesConnect web UI, right?
[Update - 05.08.2010]
Still nothing… For sure, I’ve also sent another email, knowing nobody at Apple will ever really get it. And iTunesConnect says just:
… and if you click the link, you just get to the Contact Us form, which I already used lots of times and though did again on thuesday …
This time, I even didn’t get any automated email saying “thx for your request, we will look into it”. So either I’m already out or got my own spam filter on Apple or iTunesConnect failed again?! I don’t know…
Anyway, I want to say big THX for all the support of you people, but even news pages seem not really interested in this story (how could they, with another story like this every day or week), so I’ve just no other idea how Apple could ever listen on this.
Twitter It!
Jeff
July 30, 2010 at 1:03 pm
that’s such a bummer. I hope someone clears this up for you.
Tom
July 30, 2010 at 1:17 pm
This is such a shame.
They seem to have a very strict approval method.
Good luck getting it resolved.
Jimbo
July 30, 2010 at 2:37 pm
“…They seem to have a very strict approval method…”
Haha, that’s a good one!
Waky waky fanboy, that’s A P P L E politics!!!
That’s the nice guys with the suicide factory, the non existing antenna problem and … well… the “very strict approval methods” which remind me of history…
cae
July 30, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Tom, “strict” is a funny way to spell “arbitrary.” ;o)
Buckaroo HB88
July 30, 2010 at 3:22 pm
It’s really sad because apple is the new evil empire, only unlike microsoft, they’re really good at it.
Adam Olsen
July 30, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Yes, yes you should develop for Android. Where when you “submit” your app in the market, it’s immediately available, no politics or anything.
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the iPhone. I think the iPhone 4 is the coolest device ever, but I just can’t stand crap like this.
How can they treat people like this and sleep at night? It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Matt
July 30, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Stop developing iPhone applications, it’s as simple as that. I won’t write another line of code for Apple, why should I? If they are going to treat developers like this, then they can go to hell. Migrate to the platforms that will treat you with respect.
DerFlash
August 3, 2010 at 10:44 pm
@Matt & other the “plz go to Android” below:
I really appreciate the request for Rooms @ Android (or even on other platforms).
But its finally not THAT easy!
The thing is, I love my Mac, iPhone & iPad. And I love most of the things Apple creates and does. And developing for a device which I dont wanna use, just doesn’t make much sense to me.
Android is like “Linux on PC” – I mean, don’t get me wrong:
It works, and is much better than windows (mobile), but I just want something which works (mostly) right out of the box, is nice to look at and easy to use
And I just don’t want to run off everytime something goes wrong or just doesn’t fit!
Instead, I want to (try to) make Apple listen to us developers. To fix their huge mess of stupid rules (there are good ones too for sure).
And tell Apple that some of their employees just seem not willing to do their work (like just replying to emails) like they should!
Chris Jones
July 30, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Eww, don’t use the VOIP background task – that’s going to look so ugly with the extra titlebar blinking on about Rooms while you do everything else. What if other persistent networking tools did this (e.g. iSSH). It clearly doesn’t scale.
It’s annoying that Apple hasn’t yet addressed the use-case of apps that favour a persistent network connection, but there we go.
They are at least allowing the background task completion for this sort of thing, which gets you 10 minutes of multitasking and then you fire a local notification to prompt the user to quickly return to your app if they care about keeping the connection.
Or you build a network service that people can pay to use which the iPhone client connects to and pushes notifications to them when they’re disconnected
Whether or not the App Store process is confusing, slow and imperfect, trying to get around the rules with ugly hacks is not a good idea IMHO.
DerFlash
July 30, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Hi Chris,
using the “voip mode” is not essentially using this “green bar” at the top.
A short explanation:
Its just that the system itself “holds” the connection open, which the app created and still puts the app into “sleep mode” when its “closed” like all other iOS4 updated apps do for using “fast switch”.
Then if some bytes come in on this network connection it wakes up the app for some seconds, lets it do its work (answering/checking the data/reacting) and then puts it back to sleep. THAT’s why I wrote, that its absolutely nice implemented by Apple. On my testing iPhone it runs all day long and only makes a very little battery drain compared to an app which would run 100% all day long.
——
For the “network service” you describe. Thats the way “bouncers” work. Because its just not possible to modify all IRC servers in the world, there are those proxys/bouncers.
just guessing hrhr)
But unfortunately, if you speak with some bnc providers, there are a little handful of “big” providers which have so called “trust” on all big IRC networks. Most (and new) providers don’t get any, since the IRC networks itself seem not to be in the mood to issue new trusts. (or just get payed by those big networks to not do this
Hope that clears some things up.
Dennis Groves
July 30, 2010 at 8:35 pm
I can’t speak for all Android owners, but I for one would love to have you developing for a more ‘free’ as in freedom, not gratis, platform.
John
July 31, 2010 at 2:28 am
Yes, develop for android. Please!
erik
July 31, 2010 at 3:22 am
why not just put it in for review again and again and again and again. maybe they give up some day.
Frank Merciless
July 31, 2010 at 7:21 am
Or then they just realized you are doing something cool enough, now want to steal your idea, and will make you wait to get their own version out. Good idea to post this though. May end them up with lawsuit if they try what I presume.
Tom Page
July 31, 2010 at 2:14 pm
This must be pretty annoying, but in the end the decision is yours – you can develop for a closed, monopoly platform with arbitrary rules, or you can not. If you choose the former then you have to go along with Apple’s rules.
If, like me, you think this platform is many times worse than any supposed monopoly Microsoft ever had, then you won’t touch the iPhone/Pad/Pod, and you’ll develop for open platforms.
CVSeuy
August 5, 2010 at 12:44 am
You should sell this on cydia store if it never comes to App Store. Plus on cydia store, you don’t need to worry about apple’s rules.