Lot's of great things coming out of WWDC, but here we are in 2015 and I feel like little has changed since the launch of iTunes connect. What's the deal apple? We both know there are plenty solutions to this problem. I'm trying to understand the resistance, because it definitely has nothing to do with security, and keeping the ecosystem safe. I've had apps that crashed on launch get pushed through, so we're definitely not talking about quality control here.
The only reason I can come up with is that Apple knows/thinks that update velocity is detrimental to the end user, and app reviews are politically easier to implement. Did your app reviewers join some powerful union? Or maybe the internal team is overselling the value of app reviews up the chain of command? It doesn't even make sense. You're telling me if a developer who has had >5 submissions to the app store without prior problems has to wait 12 days to improve their software? You tell us “write quality code” yet you don’t even allow us to test against prior operating systems that still hold a significant portion of the market. Testing is still a complete joke. Almost every company I know purchases a separate enterprise account, JUST to be able to distribute betas that’s not completely asinine. I wonder what percentage of your accounts are actual "enterprise accounts" wink wink.
Have you tried onboarding testers with TestFlight? It’s a disaster at best. I'm a developer and I can't even use testflight because it's attached to an apple id, and if you're a normal developer you probably have many apple ids, because, apple is still trying to figure out "user accounts" on itunes connect. Guess how fun it is swapping in and out apple ids.
This is not producing quality releases. It just makes the unfortunate end user stuck with inferior/broken software. I know you have the internal data on # of expedited requests because of either business critical timelines, and serious bugs from device and OS fragmentation. You know, like when apple released 8.0.1 and it broke PHONE FUNCTIONALITY. Man, I hope your expedited review got approved in less than 48 hours. Why do you make us jump through these hoops. Listen, if we wanted to get crappy software through to the app store, any developer could figure how to get it past the review. There are lots of ways you could improve review times, on very simple signals from developer accounts and account history. Even if you left everything status quo, a simple “Revert” to previous version is a heck of a lot better the current system of Expedited + Pulling completely out of the app store. You can't seriously believe reviews after initial submission add *any* real benefit to Apple, the consumer, or the developer.
Here is snapchat with a release on April 6th, and then again on April 7th. [image redacted]
You're telling me the biggest App in the ecosystem, who employs many brilliant Stanford computer scientists are submitting expedited reviews? You're making them wait 11 days to improve their software? Submit culture is exhausting, and i know this because we all just threw our hands up and changed to fixed release schedules like we're producing console games for compact discs. Why? Because the developer platform is broken and no one cares.