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.
Note that with respect to Nokia what you describe is no longer the case. Last I checked it took 1 Euro to register as a developer, and Nokia QA+signing is free. Developers get 70% cut as elsewhere.
He probably could have been a bit clearer but he did acknowledge that Nokia's procedures had been changed by putting "pre-iPhone" in front of Nokia's name.
> As crappy as the whole process can be it is still a million times better than pre-iPhone Nokia.
The iOS submission process looks terrible compared to the approval required to, say, launch a website - but fantastic compared to submitting to consoles, mobile carriers, etc.
Console submissions adhere to pre-established, well-known rules. There is a significant amount of certainty regarding what sort of content will pass muster. With iOS, approval is highly dependent on the individual reviewer, who may or may not make the decision based on the purported guidelines released by Apple.
Comments
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.
Note that with respect to Nokia what you describe is no longer the case. Last I checked it took 1 Euro to register as a developer, and Nokia QA+signing is free. Developers get 70% cut as elsewhere.
He probably could have been a bit clearer but he did acknowledge that Nokia's procedures had been changed by putting "pre-iPhone" in front of Nokia's name.
> As crappy as the whole process can be it is still a million times better than pre-iPhone Nokia.
The iOS submission process looks terrible compared to the approval required to, say, launch a website - but fantastic compared to submitting to consoles, mobile carriers, etc.
Console submissions adhere to pre-established, well-known rules. There is a significant amount of certainty regarding what sort of content will pass muster. With iOS, approval is highly dependent on the individual reviewer, who may or may not make the decision based on the purported guidelines released by Apple.