Open Radar

 
The App Store review process needs to be improved. Here's some (probably unoriginal) ideas to improve the process for us:

Put a fixed duration on all review times. Perhaps 7 days. Nothing gets approved faster than that and nothing takes any longer than that. Period.

If the developer finds a bug and wants to re-submit during the 7 day waiting period, the app's timer resets and the developer knows they must wait another 7 days if they choose to reject their application and submit it again before it has been approved. We would all love for our place in line not to be lost in those cases, but better still would be to have the sequence of actions well-known and well-defined so we can make better decisions.

If Apple is unable to verify all submitted apps within 7 days, then Apple should do random or weighted spot-checks of apps as much as possible instead. Apps that don't get around to being checked after 7 days are automatically approved. If Apple wants to ensure a higher default level of quality of the App Store, then Apple would need to deploy more resources toward ensuring they can check a greater percentage of apps within the 7 day waiting period. Don't punish the many trustworthy and experienced developers who depend on App Store income with inconsistent delays due to Apple's own resource allocation policies which the developer has no visibility nor control of.

Apple can adjust the weightings for which apps ultimately get reviewed by a human based on whatever factors Apple identifies as important - rate of app update, number of apps published by the developer, number of recent violations, how many times their apps are rejected when they are actually reviewed by a human, how long it has been since one of the developer's apps has been human-reviewed, customer complaints, number of stars users have awarded the app in the App Store, etc.

If an app that was approved and made for sale is later found to be in violation, Apple already has the ability to pull the app from sale and/or allow the developer to fix the problems and go through review again as necessary. This is better than the current expectation which, given the long and inconsistent review times, developers assume their app was fully checked and found to fully comply and if they get pulled later they feel rightfully betrayed by the system. If the process was clearly defined as being a waiting period with a random spot-check, the developer should expect that they may get pulled later if their app was not actually vetted during the waiting period.

The developer should not know if their app was manually vetted or not during their waiting period as this gives Apple latitude to change its mind without there being any opportunity of, "but mine was reviewed and you can't do that!" Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

This process also allows Apple some latitude to say that if an app is found to be in serious violation (fraud, etc.) within some period after the 7 day review window (maybe 15 days), Apple could optionally choose to not even pay the developer for any sales that may have happened and could also choose to automatically refund customers who may have purchased the bad app which would be a great customer service experience for end users and increase confidence in the store's integrity. Things like that.

Assuming there are some weeks where more apps are submitted than others, on slower weeks Apple could work through a backlog of recently approved but not reviewed apps if necessary and issue warnings or pull the apps if violations are found. Likewise, if Apple develops more thorough automated testing, they could apply that testing to already-approved apps and warn developers without the developer being unaware of potential up-coming problems that will only be exposed the next time they try to submit after potentially months of work and investment.

When an app happens to be selected for random screening and is found to be in violation, rejections should be immediate. Do not force the developer to wait 7 days to see their rejection. If the app is automatically rejected due to some kind of automated testing systems before a human would even see the app, the rejection should be immediate so the developer doesn't waste 7 days waiting only to discover they made a silly omission or used the wrong compiler flag.