Hi there,

I REALLY don’t know what happened yet. There’s no information or email from Apple. They seemed to have just pulled Rooms from all stores in the world without any hint or reason…

In the last update – which also fixed its compatibility against iOS 4.0+ – I removed all private API calls as requested by Apple. Some customers got mad because it now didn’t stay connected anymore like it did for ages, BUT I did what Apple requested me to do. So still using private API calls can not be the reason…

I wouldn’t even have noticed it until now, if a customer wouldn’t have sent me an email regarding this, after he tried to reinstall Rooms after he updated his phone! (THX Brad!)

iTunes Connect just says that its “Removed from Sale”. I’ve already sent an email questioning what had happened. Stay tuned!

This cannot be the normal way Apple pulls an app, hm? Just delete, no info, no nothing? And even IF I had gotten an email AFTERWARDS, this would be ridiculous not just telling me before, what exactly is wrong and needs to be changed… :-/

*I HOPE IT IS JUST A DREAM* (or at least just a little mistake)

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This time I’ve to say: PRAISE Apples review team! Expedited Review was granted and Rooms already got through the successful review and it should be in the app store in some minutes!

What now?

The bad news first:

The reason for the expedited review/update request was a crash of Rooms right from the start,  after updating the iPhone/iPod to iOS 4.0. This was because of a feature you all liked alot and which I will really miss, now I had to remove it.

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Now that iOS 4.0 is out, everybody will ask ‘Why the heck does Rooms crash right from the start?’

At first I’ve to say sorry for that! An update/fix is already in review and waits for its approval!

I’ve also sent an ‘Expedited App Review Request’, but I’m sure I’m actually not the only one with that request on Apple…

So why does it crash?

The reason for this is a feature you all liked alot and which I will really miss, since Apple requested to remove this, because it’s using undocumented API calls and so is against the rules.

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*sigh*

After all I went through until today for only updating my iPhone app – and besides it is STILL not successfully reviewed yet – I just feel helpless now :-/

So I think it’s time to make that problem even more public and this time I also don’t longer care to add EVERY ridiculous email I got…

Unfortunately the very only reason for Apple to get their asses up and do something for us developers are blog posts on the main news pages, showing what (again) goes wrong with their current process – although this apparently only lasts for some days until the news pages get quiet about it.

So I’m really honest about this now: It would be great if you people can help me here and link/comment my diary as most as you can to other websites to spread the word around!

In short:

• 3 weeks before iPhone 3.0 release I found a bug in iPhone OS which made my app not working properly (filed a bug and helped tracking it down)
• ‘OS 3.0 final’ still contained the bug anyway – found a workaround but could not upload an app update due to an iTunes connect bug (iTunes thought I had to accept another agreement – was wrong)
• took nearly a month for this bug to disappear (due to a new agreement which seemed to fixe my status of the old one) > now I could send in the update to work around their OS bug
• until today another 3 months of review craziness followed, including:
• rejection for wrong rating (rating was new to the app store, and even they were wrong about how to change it when you got rejected (rating option were grayed out) – took me another week to find out how to successfully change it – no help from their side again)
• standard mails which say my app needs more time again (you get them automatically when you’re app passed the 2 weeks without reaction)
• rejection for using ‘their’ ⌘-symbol within my app (in fact there are plenty apps out there, where it doesn’t seem to be any problem – bast example: ‘Keymote’ (great app in fact!)
• my try to get attention by making my story public through the iTunes app description
• their call 3 days after this to ‘talk’ about some issues with the app binary and the iTunes description – and in fact these issues with the app update contained the ‘issue’ which I fixed to the first rejection (the rating!), which he then noted and apologized… with the words that they will do their best to get the update out now
• still … NOTHING but an app in review!

And here’s the whole timeline for my actual app store update hell:

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