[OT] A tale of App Store rejection

Robert Sneidar slylabs13 at me.com
Thu Jan 17 13:48:00 EST 2013


You should have made it into a game, but with real traffic conditions. 

Bob


On Jan 17, 2013, at 4:50 AM, Andre Garzia wrote:

> Hey Folks,
> 
> I am sharing here an experience with the iOS App Store.
> 
> I live in the beautiful city of Niterói in the state of Rio de Janeiro (as
> seen in http://fon.nu/15DD13EL). Most of the citizens of my city work in
> the city of Rio de Janeiro.
> 
> There are two ways to go from here to Rio. There is the ferry boat which
> takes 20 minutes but has queues so long that you can wait an hour and a
> half to board and there is the famous Rio - Niterói bridge that spans 13km
> and is the only reasonable way to get to rio by car or bus. The problem is
> that the bridge tends to be tangled in huge traffic jams that can last
> forever. So people here face a dilemma, should I take a bus to Rio or a
> ferry boat. Millions of people suffer that every day, twice a day, on the
> way into Rio and on the way out of Rio.
> 
> So to help myself and others, I created this app that can be seen here:
> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amoralabs.eponte
> 
> It displays in very large letters the current state of the traffic in the
> bridge and if you want, you can see more details about how it got that way.
> 
> I built the little backend server thingy that figures out how the bridge is
> and serve as the place that this thin stack connects to get information.
> 
> The application has 413 installations here, mostly because I don't make any
> marketing.
> 
> So after releasing on Android, I decided to release it on iOS. I did all
> the juggling and uploaded it to Apple and a week later they rejected it
> because it was too simple, didn't provide enough features or lasting
> entertainment and could be done as a website. Well, 3G connection here is
> not as widespread as in New York so opening a web page on your cell phone
> every time you want to check on the bridge is a waste of resources and
> time. My app transmits a very small string so even on edge, it can figure
> out the traffic easily. Also, this app is actually useful to the thousands
> of iphone owners who commutes to Rio every day but Apple seems to prefer
> fart apps and thus my app is not coming to iOS.
> 
> The lesson here is beware of your features because the app store is getting
> very picky. Minimal applications that provide a single useful feature are
> no longer good enough for them. Heck my app wasn't even ugly as some stuff
> there. Anyway, I just wanted to share the experience for the benefit of
> those that are building apps as small as mine.
> 
> This app was built in a day, including the server. It was a "dare" from a
> friend who said: "how fast can you build something to check on the bridge
> for Android?" and I said "fast."
> 
> At least people on Android can enjoy easy access to the traffic conditions.
> 
> Cheers
> andre
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.andregarzia.com -- All We Do Is Code.
> http://fon.nu -- minimalist url shortening service.
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