This week I’ve been hearing a lot about Apple’s new step towards transparency for the App Store review process.  In a nutshell, they have added submission histories and a new status step of “Waiting for Review”.  See more info in this TUAW article by Erica Sadun.  On the surface I think it’s at least a welcome step and certainly represents an acknowledgment of a major deficiency area.  Any developer will know the frustration of watching the boiling water pot as you log in to your iTunesConnect account daily looking for a change in status.  Especially in light of the fact that Apple’s emails of acceptance or rejection rarely coincide with the actual timing of such action.

But in reality how does this help? Do folks not remember when they submit their Apps?  Or how long they were under review?  And adding a status that is in reality no different then the already popular “In Review” is like saying “In the Oven” versus “Baking”.  As always though it’s nice marketing by the masters of the art.  The only catch is that currently not every developer has this new feature enabled on their account.  So it is really nice to show off a quick approval like the image in the TUAW article but I can’t help but wonder: what would our timeline for VoiceCentral look like?

• March 26, 2009 – VoiceCentral “In Review” after the original submission
• April 2, 2009 – VoiceCentral is “requiring unexpected additional time for review”
• April 10, 2009 – VoiceCentral “Rejected” for following the UI guidelines as outlined by Apple, however those guidelines apparently also cause it to “imitate(s) standard iPhone screen images closely, potentially resulting in user confusion”.
• April 17, 2009 – VoiceCentral “In Review” after a fresh new design was applied
• April 28, 2009 – VoiceCentral “Ready For Sale” finally.
• May thru July 2009 – VoiceCentral multiple updates are submitted and approved.  All “requiring unexpected additional time for review” (Really, Apple?  Thanks.  We couldn’t tell from the month it took you to approve the first version.)
• July 27, 2009 – VoiceCentral “Rejected” We received word that our app was removed with no notice or meaningful explanation.
• August 21, 2009 – Apple claims to the FCC that they are merely pondering.  Check out our screenshot below if you haven’t already seen this article from Techcrunch.
• Sometime recently – The original VoiceCentral binary goes from “Rejected” to “Removed From Sale”
• Side Note: Since they can’t really decide the difference between “pondering” and “rejected”, we went ahead and submitted a new version of VoiceCentral with the current enhancements and fixes.   I’m guessing the time line for the new binary will be quite a long straight line without any of the excitement from last time.

So needless to say our time line in their tool might be a little too messy for their liking.  I sincerely doubt we will see this feature turned on for our account anytime soon.  Our issues aside, it is nice to see Apple attempt to add transparency it’s only too bad this attempt is, well, um… transparent.  No real value.  No improvement for developers.  It’s simple marketing fluff, “See guys we’re trying!”.  Apple try harder.  Folks are dropping like flies.

UPDATE: Here’s yet another terrible saga of App Store Shenanigans.

Screenshots after the jump… (more…)