After more than a year of waiting and countless attempts to contact Apple, we believe that a new initiative by Apple may be a step in the right direction. The right direction for our native VoiceCentral app, sure, but more importantly the right direction for developer relations as a whole. It seems like Apple is really making an effort here and we applaud them.
There were many articles last week dissecting Apple’s new guidelines and their new App Review Board, but we received our own first hand evidence on Friday.
Since being removed from the store over a year ago, we resubmitted VoiceCentral and spent the entire time in “In Review” purgatory. Then late on Friday, out of the blue, we received a rejection notice from Apple!
iTunes Connect view before the update:
and after:
Now normally a rejection notice is not something to get excited about, but considering the last status update we had was a random confirmation in December that we were still “In Review” – we’ll take it!
Most importantly, this was a rejection notice with very specific feedback on why it was rejected and what actions we could take. It is very refreshing compared to the level of detail we were able to obtain last July (and not to mention the ongoing radio silence that endured until now). All that aside, if this is an indication of a new kinder, gentler, more informative Apple then we are unabashed fans! (again)
We still believe that our innovative HTML5 Black Swan version is even better than our original native app, but assuming we will have a chance to re-enter the App Store, we will be excited to do so.
So what were the suggestions you could implement to get accepted? I use BlackSwan premium and agree that it’s better than the first crop of GV native apps… I’m really looking forward to what you and the competition come out with now that the prohibition might finally be over!
I hope you guys keep the same or a similar user interface because Black Swan’s design rock.
Have you guys resubmitted your app to the App Store since two other Google Voice apps have been approved?
I disagree that your web apps is better then a core app… I live in a area which has very weak AT&T and when I’m not connected to a WiFi hot spot it becomes very slow. However you web app is much better Offical Google web app.