Average App Store Review Times

It had been a couple of years since I last submitted an app until this week. I was amazed. Within 24 hours I'd been rejected (app is UK only so they had some questions as they're testing in the US), had a few back and forth's on the resolution centre (all answered in 1 hour) and I was on the store. I think it was less than 36 hours. Crazy how much better it is. I remember being thrilled when it was 4-5 days (down from 10-14 days) a couple of years ago.

The review times have gotten better and overall the process of going from "New Project..." to "Ready for Sale" is much smoother than it was 10 years ago when I made my first iPhone OS app.

But the market is pretty hard to get into. You can add real value with a well-executed unique idea (like we did with Bubble Maker, look it up) but unless you're a big name or an established player, there just seems to be no chance of getting your foot in the door.

More interesting was a blog post sometime ago about how scammers are still able to game the app reviews and dupe people. Has that been fixed now? I've never submitted an app to App store but it must be infuriating to know that your legit app is being constantly rejected while a fake virus scanner or battery optimizer is making 100k a month.

I dislike the whole app store process in general & can't wait until web apps are mainstream. First you have to download 5GB xcode even if you're just packaging something like a Cordova app. Then you have to login to Apple's developer center & manually upload (or you research 3rd party tools that automate this with unofficial APIs) Then you have to wait anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks for the app to be approved, then you notice a typo & start all over.

Luckily there is a way around this when using hybrid apps, by having your app hot load new JS & HTML.... Meteor does this. Ionic Deploy does this. You can also do it yourself in a few lines of code. Its great being able to just fix a typo & deploy instantly. It is allowed since its considered content updates & not code updates. However you still need app store updates sometimes, like adding a new permission for your app.

I guess this explains those spammy apps.

The fact that there is a review time at all nowadays is ridiculous. The claim I've heard from Apple is that they have a review process to ensure the quality of the apps on the store, but we all know that's a joke.

As far as I can tell, it's there to make sure Apple gets their cut of any revenue generated in your app.