Critical App Release

Seems like this has been a particularly difficult month for App Review with constant reports of delays. My random guess is they took the whole team that does in-depth iOS reviews and transferred them to train on macOS so that they could approve Catalyst apps. That has caused a massive backlog on iOS. Just a guess mind you.

We're in a similar boat. Getting any kind of response seems to be near impossible right now. Not even expedites are working (presumably unless you're a privileged app like Twitter and a few others that seem to update almost every day).

While it's a change that simple apps are getting ~24 hour reviews, it seems like a matter of appearances and not substance. If a fair number of apps still go literally weeks without progress, the process is no better than it ever was. The original and still the primary problem with App Review is how opaque the process is. Why are our apps still "In Review" after 11 calendar days? Nobody knows. One of the messages we got back a couple weeks ago, we had to take a guess as to the problem because they're so mired in rules that they don't tell you what the issue is.

Unfortunately, Apple isn't concerned about your customers. Apple considers them to be Apple customers first. 24-hour reviews are about as good as it gets.

What is the API issue? Is this with a 3rd party? There might be ways to mitigate that in the future. It is risky to release an app that depends on APIs that you don't control.

I understand about mitigate for the future and we will definitely be taking appropriate precautions into the future.

The damage is being caused now however (and over the past 10 days) and there is nothing it seems we can do to help our customers.

24 hour reviews are fine. The reasons for standard rejections are fine also, I support the whole process. But there needs to be a way in exceptional circumstances to one-timeaccept flaws and allow a certain build if it fixes a critical, breaking portion of the existing product.

24 hour reviews are exceptionally good. Unfortunately, you have to look at these situations from Apple's perspective. If Apple allowed an "exceptional circumstances" clause they would be flooded with "exceptional circumstances" review requests overnight. You know they would.

This is exactly the intended use for expedited review requests. Unfortunately, so many developers abuse expedited review requests because of some promised deadline they can't meet (or because they simply get impatient waiting for a review to finish) that Apple probably doesn't have time to wade through all of them to find the ones that are legitimate.