It’s that second experience where even a little window to say “What are you saying here?” would have been SOOO valuable. It’s also a very strange situation where developers are asked to commit significant time and money to a project before there is any ability to see the project approved or rejected.

That’s where a little give and take from Apple would make the system better for everybody, including Apple. As it is all developers are basically forced into a kind of ‘throw everything up and see what sticks’ situation which only means Apple has a lot more apps to review than they really want and the app store omits apps that would be good, and includes apps that are just chaff.

It is not a situation where perception does not equate with reality. I believe you are correct about the number of submissions and the difficulty that causes which is all the more reason to implement some kind of status update system.

The biggest problem with the App Store process is the terrible inconsistency in what constitutes cause for rejection. I have no idea what the process is inside of Apple w/the process but the logical assumption must be that there is a complete lack of set guidelines as to what triggers a rejection. And that is a huge problem where perception doesn’t do reality justice. It shouldn’t be a crapshoot whether or not an app gets approval.

The app store hasn’t even been around for very long at all and I happen to know they get a “stupid ridiculous” volume of submissions even if you don’t count the upgrades and new versions or things. What do people expect?

Sure, things like Duck Hunt could have been avoided if there was one single experienced software expert looking at each submission, but that’s just not possible folks. The kinds of people (developers) who could easily catch these glitches as they happen are not interested in working for basic wages looking at tens of thousands of dull, technical submissions to the app store. It’s not possible for Steve to check every one and I don’t see why no one ever seems to realise that.

A bunch of people work really hard in boring conditions trying to figure out if the apps should be accepted or not. They aren’t developers, and they have a printed book of instructions and guidelines to work from. They have to rely on people reporting these kind of things to them to a degree and while that has worked rather well for them, it’s portrayed in the media and on sites like this as “failure” on Apple’s part instead of what it really is which is Apple responding to complaints rather effectively and quickly.

It’s also the complaints that produce the perception that there is a “problem” when there really isn’t so much. If the developers weren’t so hot to complain all the time and run Apple over the coals every time their update gets a rejection letter, half the problems would disappear.

I’m not suggesting that there aren’t *any* problems, just that they are:

- mostly illusory
- to be expected
- shouldn’t be whined about
- usually quickly fixed
- often have a very innocuous explanation

Most of the glitches in acceptance are worked out eventually and very very few apps

http://bickbot.com/blog/use-application-loader-before-app-submission/