Martin Gordon's Blog

Merlin Mann on iPhone development (from the SF iPhone Dev Camp):

Think about having the courageousness to make an app that is crazy easy. Instead of making a circus that’s really fun to play in, just make something that’s easy to get in and out of quickly without hassle.

Yes! This is exactly what I'm going for with Flickup. I wanted it to be dead simple to post photos to Flickr and I think I've gotten pretty close. While I don't want to add frivolous features, there are some that are reasonable to consider - uploading to a set, security settings, etc. I struggled to fit the metadata view onto one screen and now I'm faced with the challenge of adding these new features without undermining the simplicity that I was going for in 1.0.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, App Store, Flickup, Flickr, Merlin Mann, iPhone Dev Camp

A few hours after my post about being rejected from the App Store, Flickup was approved. If that was all there was to the story then I would have posted about it immediately. Sadly, however, it took nine days from the time Flickup was approved until the time it was actually available for sale on the App Store.

In preparing the now-defunct demo version of Flickup, I stumbled across the contracts page on iTunes Connect and realized that my Paid Applications Contract wasn't complete. I completed it on July 17th and incessantly refreshed the contracts page to see if it had been approved yet. When Flickup was finally approved hours after my last blog post, I was met with the status of "Pending Contract" and frustration returned. I would have thought that three days would have been enough time for someone to review the contract, but apparently that wasn't the case. Having given Apple some breathing room, I finally sent them an email on the 24th asking how long the process would take. Their response? Nothing.

I didn't hear anything from Apple until the contract was approval last Monday, July 28th and the status changed to "Ready For Sale." When I finally got tired of searching the App Store every few minutes to see if Flickup was listed, I sent Apple another email. Again I received no response. It wasn't until I saw a tweet from Jon that I learned that Flickup had finally been posted and that the three week ordeal was finally over.

When I first started working on Flickup I set a lifetime sales goal ("If only X number of people ever buy the app, I would be satisfied"). I'm happy to say that I reached 10% of that target in the first full day alone. Since the app went live, I've been answering support emails (already!), pushed out (well, submitted to Apple anyway) a new version with some bug fixes, and already started working on some new features.

Now go out and buy it!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iTunes, App Store, Flickr, Flickup

I am now a proud member of the elite group of developers who have had applications rejected from the iPhone App Store.

The application I have been working on since a few weeks after the SDK came out is Flickup, a simple Flickr uploader. When Apple announced the July 7th deadline, I pulled an all-nighter that day to finish it up and submitted the app to Apple around 6am in order to meet the 3pm deadline for inclusion in the App Store at launch. When the App Store is launched on Thursday/Friday, my app is nowhere to be found and the status remains "In Review". I sent an email on Saturday to Apple asking why Flickup was still in review and I received a non-response three days later telling me that "In Review" means my application is being reviewed by Apple. I responded immediately clarifying my inquiry and I finally received this response yesterday:

At this time, Flickup cannot be posted to the App Store because it does not allow the user to logout or change the Flickr account that they are using.

In order for your application to be reconsidered for the App Store, please resolve this issue and upload your new binary to iTunes Connect.

This is a perfectly valid critique, and an oversight on my part, but did it really take them two weeks to tell me about it? Would they have even told me had I not emailed them about my app's status? In any case, the time it took to get a decision on Flickup gave me time to fix some bugs, and of course add the required logout functionality.

As an aside, the Flickr Authentication API's Implementation Guidelines merely states, "Users must be provided with 'logout' functionality." The API documentation does not provide any way to revoke tokens and log users out. I had to resort to directing users to their revoke permissions page instead.

In the mean time, the App Store turned one week old and gripes about the review functionality sprouted everywhere, particularly with regard to the ability for people to review an app without actually having used it. This "feature" of the App Store prompted the cheapskates out there to use reviews as a medium to complain about price. Taking this to heart, I spent some time last week preparing a demo version of Flickup that would allow people to sample the app before dropping two Washingtons on the full version. I submitted the demo version on Friday and received a decision today:

Flickup Demo cannot be posted to the App Store because it is a beta or feature-limited version. Any reference to demo or beta needs to be removed from the binary and metadata. Free or "Lite" versions are acceptable, however the application must be a fully functional app and cannot reference features that are not implemented or up-sell to the full version.

In spite of the lightning fast turnaround time, I am still just as angry about this rejection than the last one since there was no prior warning (in program agreements or otherwise) that demo versions would not be allowed. It's hard to believe that Apple isn't aware that people are crying out for demos and trials; going as far as explicitly prohibiting them (while letting all other sorts of crap through) is nothing short of infuriating.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone SDK, App Store, Apple, Flickup