iPhone

App Store Tip

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If you remove an application from sale, updating it does NOT automatically make it available again. You need to go to “manage your applications” in iTunes Connect, click on “Edit information”, go to the pricing tab, and select any stores you want to sell it in. After you save changes, it will show up as ‘ready for sale’ on your application page. You can also do this without updating the application or if it’s still in review. This is hidden in the FAQ.

I made both I Can Has Cheezburger (ad free) 1.5.2 and ICHC ad supported 1.5 (v1.5.2 is still in review) available a few hours ago. It still hasn’t appeared yet, but hopefully they should be available before too long.

U CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER! (almost?)

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I just got an email from Apple saying that I Can Has Cheezburger (ad free) is ready for sale. Nothing about the free version, which I submitted at the same time.

However, as of 11PM (3 hours after I received the email), it still shows ‘removed by developer’. Something is badly screwed up. I had pulled the previous version while waiting for this update to be approved, but it changed from ‘in review’ to ‘removed by developer’ rather than being ‘available for sale’.

Unexpected additional time

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For anyone who hasn’t kept up with my saga, I got a call from Apple Monday telling me exactly how I should rate ICHC and what changes I should make to the description. I did everything exactly as they requested and resubmitted it.

Today, I got the following email from the app store reviewer:

Dear Mike,

Your application, I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) 1.5.1, 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.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

ICHC 1.5.2 resubmitted

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This morning I got a very nice call from an app store reviewer at Apple telling me that I needed to remove the wording from the application descriptions which said that Apple requires a 17+ rating, and also how I should adjust the rating so it will be 17+.

After that call I readjusted the rating so it now specifies “frequent/intense crude humor” & “frequent/intense mature themes”, which gives it a 17+ rating as required. Since a 17+ rating can’t be avoided, I re-submitted my original 1.5.2 version without the “g-rated” filter. Hopefully this version won’t be delayed much longer.

My absence

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I haven’t been posting for a while because I’ve been feeling very burned out and discouraged after what happened with I Can Has Cheezburger. I’m very hurt by some of the comments by some of the customers saying things like this:

Hugely disappointed with the update, to the point of where I ended up replacing the ICHC app altogether with a bookmark icon created through Safari on my phone’s home screen. At least zooming works properly by going to the blog directly through Safari, and YouTube videos immediately trigger the YouTube app rather than going through two redirectons.

That YouTube issue has been changed in the update that I submitted more than a month ago, which also adds support for Viddler videos which are now being used at FAILblog. Rather than seeing those kinds of complaints, I felt that it would be better to pull the app from sale completely.

I really felt that this version was an improvement over the old one, but people seem to universally hate it. I rewrote a lot of code to make it a lot cleaner and made some very major improvements such as support for ICHC’s API for submitting LOLs. The unapproved update also added a shuffle feature, which was widely requested and eliminated the click to play graphic for movies.

Comments like the ones I’ve seen here just make me feel like giving up iPhone development. I certainly won’t develop any more applications that access the internet.

Changing app store ratings

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I finally discovered the trick to change the ratings for ICHC, so hopefully Apple can review it now. As long as there’s a valid binary, iTunes Connect won’t let you change the ratings. If you reject the binary, you can go to edit information and change the ratings BEFORE you upload a new binary. Once you upload that new binary, the ratings are locked out again.

I set the ratings to infrequent/mild for all items, which still only results in a 12+ rating, not the 17+ rating Apple requested. We’ll see if Apple approves it now.

ICHC Update Rejected again

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This is getting to be an ongoing ritual. I submit an update and about a week later Apple rejects it.

Here’s my latest rejection letter:

Follow-up: 78814583

Dear Mr. Cohen,

Thank you for submitting I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 & I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) to the App Store. We’ve reviewed I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 &I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) and determined that we cannot post these versions of your iPhone applications to the App Store at this time because they are not appropriately rated. Our review indicates that the applications’ contents are not consistent with the current rating. I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 & I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) contain user-generated content, which can include frequent mature or suggestive themes. Applications must be rated accordingly for the highest level of content that the user is able to access.

Please visit iTunes Connect to resubmit your binaries and rate your application appropriately.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

However, it isn’t possible to change the rating because everything is grayed out on the rating screen! A few developers have told me that the rating can only be changed for 3.0 apps, so I’m building it for 3.0 only so Apple will finally let me change the rating so they can approve it.

Fast image loading with Three20

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I get a lot of complaints about the slow swipe action in ICHC, as a result of loading each image the first time they appear. Although I added caching in version 1.5, I chose to do it that way to minimize the memory usage and avoid low memory crashes.

I’ve been looking at ways to improve the speed and one of the best options seems to be to rewrite it using Joe Hewitt’s Three20 framework. As a proof of concept, I wrote a simple test program which loads a pre-defined set of images. The scrolling & image loading performance is excellent.

Note this is just a proof of concept. I haven’t figured out all of the details of how to implement it in the actual application. The major hurdle is that I need to handle mixed photos & videos in a single stream, while the photo browser only handles photos.

Of course there won’t be any new updates until Apple approves the updates that have been in review for over a month, as well as the new updates I submitted a week ago with.