The smooths beginnings

Publishing an app to Google Play is easy, but try to upload the same app to iOS. One of our customers (let’s call him John) shared their experience with us, and now let me share the story with you. In the case of Google Play, the whole process of publishing took less than 30 minutes. The only small issue was the technical difficulty with signing the app. After hitting the “submit” button, the webmaster had to wait 3 working days and the app was live. No questions, no teasing, no problems.

You better sober up

Boldness after this unexpected success hit the wall straight in the first phase of creating a developers account. Annual fee as high as 90 EUR was unexpected, but John said. Ok, it is going to make me some decent money. The fee has been paid, account verified and now our webmaster John only has to submit the app. And there it came. Being a webmaster for a few years it was impossible for John to crack the technical difficulty of Xcode. Is there anything special about the Xcode? Well indeed. John has been working with Windows only and Xcode only runs on a Mac.

John was fooling around with the Mac of his spouse for over 2 days. Not even with the help of the Xcode community he was able to get very far. First issue was the installation of Xcode, then things went smoothly until the final step. When hitting the button “Export” all different error messages appeared. After fixing one, a completely different one arose. Back then, as a senior developer, John was charging 45 EUR per hour and after 2 wasted days (16 hours), John hired a Mac oriented guru who did this job for 70 EUR in no time.

But this is not the end of the story. If we were about to do the balance scorecard here, we would say “John lost 720 EUR worth of his time”. John expected delays in approval but to his surprise, there was none. In only 2 days there was a response… a bitter response. Since the app contained logos of football clubs and leagues, he was asked to provide proof that he is using the logos with consent of the owners. Do you understand? Apple asked John to contact over 7000 clubs and 800 Leagues and ask them for an approval or official confirmation that he is eligible to use their logos in his app.

This is of course not possible, so John decided to take a radical step. John sat down and spent a few days removing the logos from his app. The app then looked like crap, but who cares? John wasted thousands, but who cares? Apple for sure not. The question is? Why is Apple giving such hard times? Recently simplicity is the key to success,, but Apple seems to go the other way. At least by their app store. Do they want to scare away the low key app owners? I don’t know. Do you?

In any case, after more than 2 weeks, after dozens of wasted hours, after thousands blown away, John was able to see his app on iOS. I love happy endings. What about you? In the case you would like to find out more about the story, feel free to contact the webmaster from this story. But don’t call him John.

Time to visit Mr. Gates

Was this the end of the story? Almost… well not really. The real king of troubles was only to come. The Great Apps is proud to introduce Microsoft Windows apps.

To summarize it:

• Microsoft developer account - 90 EUR,
• Company approval time - 2 months!
• Publishing the app - error message “You should have registered to MS  dev account with hotmail or outlook email”
• Support case - 2 weeks and new email account John was forced to open
• Publishing the app - rejected

What was the reason for the app being rejected? According to the answer from their app store support, the app was not following the strict MS store guidelines. Did John appeal? Of course. John gave them dozens of similar apps that have been available on the Microsoft store. Some of them were old, some of them no more than 2 months. So why? My guess is that John pissed off somebody in charge. After the appeal was rejected, it was no longer possible to appeal and the responses from support were just automatic bot responses.

There are however 2 reasons why not to take this too seriously. First one is that nobody really uses the Microsoft app store anymore. Since there are not more Microsoft powered mobiles, Microsoft app store offers only the Windows apps. And there are a few more stores to look at. Next one is Amazon.