30 Days, App (Still) Not Approved

09 Dec 2008, 20:29 PST

Update

Peeps has been approved!

Apple's Lesson in Zen Patience

30 days ago, we were excited. Peeps 1.0 was finished, localized into a few languages, and submitted to the iPhone App Store for review. We even loved the icon — drawn by the talented Kelly J. Brownlee.

Most of my friend's apps were approved within a day, so after a week of waiting, I sent Apple an e-mail, to which they duly responded:

Your application Peeps is requiring unexpected additional time for review.
We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as
we are able.

So we waited. An exercise in Zen — patience in the modern age. I released an update to the Plausible Database library. I finished preparing ActorKit for release. I took on some contracting work.

I sent follow-up e-mails, too. They all went unanswered. I even called Apple Developer Relations (they'll forward my query on, said the support representative. I should call for updates). So 30 days later, Peeps is still in limbo. It's not approved, nor is it rejected, it just simply is. I was fastidious in following Apple’s guidelines, used no private API, and I'm left with no idea what has triggered this state of application limbo.

What can I do? Apple doesn't answer my e-mails or phone calls, and my hard work is sitting in a queue, somewhere. I guess I write a blog post, and then try learn from this lesson in Zen.

[Addendum] - To clarify, we're not using the UICoverFlowLayer private API -- we wrote our own CoverFlow implementation (demo 1, demo 2)