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Category: Business/Productivity |
Announcing our free iPhone 4 app
Description The Outskirts Press Free Publishing App for the iPhone 4 (running iOS 4) is now available for download. It provides mobile access to live updates through the Outskirts Press publishing and social communities. Please note: This app works for the iPhone 4 running iOS4 and the iPad, but does not work on the older, first generation iPhones (iPhone 3). Over the past several months this blog has touched upon the process of dealing with Apple to get this application available. It was not without its hurdles. But that’s what Outskirts Press does; we confront those challenges for authors so they don’t have to. Coming soon will be Author Apps, and I’ll talk more about that exciting new marketing option for authors as it gets closer. In the meantime, here are some features/benefits of the new Outskirts Press Free Publishing App:
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Tag: apple apps
So exactly 1 week after we received the “Waiting for Review” email from Apple, we received the “In Review” notification.
The review of our Outskirts Press Free Publishing app took 4 hours and 38 minutes. At 4:38 in the afternoon on Tuesday, one week after submitting it, we received the following notice from Apple:
Dear Outskirts Press,
The status for the following app has changed to Processing for App Store.
| App Name: Outskirts Press Free Publishing App |
| App Version Number: X.XXXXX |
| App SKU: 01 |
| App Apple ID: XXXXXXX |
To make changes to this app, sign in to iTunes Connect and open the Manage Your Applications module.
If you have any questions regarding your app, click Contact Us in iTunes Connect.
Regards,
The iTunes Store Team
And then, 21 minutes later, we received this notice:
Dear Outskirts Press,
The following app has been approved. The status has changed to Ready for Sale.
If your contracts are not in effect at this time, however, your app status will be Pending Contract. You may track the progress of your contracts in the Contracts, Tax, and Banking module in iTunes Connect.
Note that it may take up to 24 hours before your app is live on the App Store. This delay is dependent upon any app availability issues.
| App Name: Outskirts Press Free Publishing App |
| App Version Number: X.XXXXXX |
| App SKU: 01 |
| App Apple ID:XXXXXXX |
To make changes to this app, sign in to iTunes Connect and open the Manage Your Applications module.
If you have any questions regarding your app, click Contact Us in iTunes Connect.
Sincerely,
The iTunes Store Team
For a new application, from a new developer (us), our “Waiting for Review” status lasted a week, to the day, so this gives other developers a good idea of what they can expect when they submit their first application. Apple doesn’t give you any indication of how long anything takes, so you don’t know whether to set your expectations for “an hour” or “a day” or “a week” or “a month.”
Last Tuesday, when we first uploaded the app we received the “Waiting for Upload” status notification, followed shortly thereafter by the “Waiting for Review” status notification.
Then …. nothing… for days…
Then, yesterday, the following Tuesday after we uploaded the app, at 10am, we received the following notification:
Dear Outskirts Press,
The status for the following app has changed to In Review.
| App Name: Outskirts Press Free Publishing App |
| App Version Number: X.xxxxx |
| App SKU: 01 |
| App Apple ID:XXXXXXXX |
To make changes to this app, sign in to iTunes Connect and open the Manage Your Applications module.
If you have any questions regarding your app, click Contact Us in iTunes Connect.
Regards,
The iTunes Store Team
At 4:38pm on the same Tuesday, we received the next notice, which I’ll discuss tomorrow.
As promised, here is a sneak peak of our new free Outskirts Press app.
It is currently being tested and will be available very soon, possibly even by the time you’re reading this (since I’m posting these early and it’s still May right now). Its location on both our website and in the Apple App Store will be posted when it becomes available.
As I mentioned last time, once you log-in to http://developer.apple.com/iphone you will click on iOS Provisioning Portal, a “title” that demonstrates by its very nature that Apple is run by a bunch of IT people. “iOS Provisioning Portal…” Really, Apple? Who named that? I mention this as an aside because I imagine it’s a very common phenomenon at just about every tech-centered business that involves software. Which, is really all any website is, a piece of software. The problem is that IT folks are rarely marketing people — their minds are not alike. So a name like “iOS Provisioning Portal” makes perfect sense to the IT people responsible for naming that section, categorizing the site, and programming the functionality. After all, that is without a doubt the EXACT name of what it is.
The problem is that for the rest of us, which describes 99% of your customers, by the way, Apple, “iOS Provisioning Portal” is gobbley-gook that means nothing and in no way encourages us to click on it.
We run into that problem at Outskirts Press, too. We will launch a new option and instead of it being called something logical or customer-centric like “Custom Cover for Your Hardback” it will often wind up in a customer’s shopping cart with the unwieldy name of “F2 C_Cov Lam_HB” until I test it in a live environment and rename it.
But, I digress… Back to the certification process, which I will continue next…
After trying to enroll in the Apple Developer Certification program and waiting a number of weeks, we contacted Apple only to receive an email advising us that they couldn’t locate the “stamp” on the Articles of Incorporation for some reason, and that the information on the Articles should match the information we submitted online for our Certificate. Certainly a reasonable request, so I provided the following reply:
Thank you very much for your response. I respectfully request that you look at the document closer. The Articles of Incorporation we faxed had the official court stamp in the upper right hand corner, slightly crooked. It may be difficult to read because of so many faxed iterations, but it’s there, and directly below it is another stamp from the Secretary of State indicating the payment receipt, the date, and the time it was received and accepted, exactly as you require. So I’m not sure where the confusion is. Please look at the document again. I’d be happy to take a photo of that corner with my cool iPhone and email it to you if that would help clarify it.
As for the address and phone number, we’ve moved since incorporating to accommodate our growth. We don’t have a new Articles of Incorporation document with our new address. But our new address and phone number I included in the online application with Apple is the one we want associated with our Apple account and you can confirm that data by visiting our website at www.outskirtspress.com. Certainly we can’t be the only company who has an address that differs from the one on an 8-year-old Articles of Incorporation document….?
Please help me overcome this small technicality. Thank you in advance.
They say you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar. I don’t know if my response was “honey” per se, but in this day and Internet age when everyone seems awfully quick to fire off foaming-at-the-mouth-at-the-slightest-inconvenience-or-misunderstanding types of emails, I thought this might serve as an example of what’s possible when one steps back, takes a breath, and approaches a frustrating circumstance with diplomacy.
A few weeks ago I started discussing our process of enrolling Outskirts Press into the Apple Developer Certification program so we could start offering “apps” to our authors (and so we could provide our own Outskirts Press apps for marketing purposes).
The posts detailed the first few steps involved in enrolling in the program, and ended with us waiting…. and waiting… for Apple approval. In the meantime, we’ve re-faxed the documents they requested several more times, contacted their support forms online, and tried emailing them. In one such online correspondence we even sunk so low as to plead with them to have an actual human being contact us (up until then, their responses had all been automated versions of the “find the answer yourself on our FAQ” variety.)
Finally, we tried enrolling again from scratch. This resulted in them providing us with a new enrollment number, and then requesting the documentation again. Once again, we faxed them our Articles of Incorporation, along with our corporate phone number and our Enrollment ID number, all as requested.
Finally, I received an email from an actual human being which helped me understand what has been causing this delay (we started this process over a month ago, and all my previous research led me to believe it wouldn’t take any longer than a week). What his email said, and my reply, will be the subject of the next post(s)…
So once we completed step 1, which was registering at http://developer.apple.com/programs/start/standard/create.php and once we completed step 2, which was (for us) indicating that we were a company interested in becoming a developer, we waited…. Apple needed more information to complete their review of our application.
7 days later… (yes, days), we received this from Apple:
“We are currently in the process of reviewing your iOS Developer Program enrollment information. Please fax one of the following forms of identity for your business. To assist with this process, please ensure your business documents match your enrollment information. Fax your submission to <their fax number>. Please include your Enrollment ID <our enrollment ID> that was provided to you upon submission.
Please include your main company corporate telephone number with your faxed documents.
Articles of incorporation
Business license
Certificate of Formation
Charter documents
Operating Agreement
Partnership papers
Reseller or vendor license
Best regards,
Apple Developer Support”
We submitted our Articles of Incorporation. That was exactly 1 week ago. We’re still waiting…. I’ll keep you posted, and then we can continue with the next steps of the application process which includes, among other things, paying Apple (of course).
Don’t expect to become a certified Apple developer overnight. Completing step 1 takes a matter of minutes. Completing step 2 takes…. well, I can’t tell you how long it takes, because we’re still waiting.
HOW TO Create an iPhone Developer Account (IOS)
1. Register as a new Apple developer at http://developer.apple.com/programs/start/standard/create.php
2. Confirm whether you are an individual or a company
When we indicated that Outskirts Press was a company registering to become an Apple Developer, we were notified that our application was under review. All developer registrations under-go a review process, and the review process for an “individual” (which is also a choice) is presumably faster than the review process for a “company” (which is the choice we selected). Individuals, I have been told by others, are reviewed and/or approved within 1-2 days, although that estimate came before Apple development was at the state of popularity it is today, so that could be a short estimate now.
As for our review as a company, it took Apple 7 days to send a request for more information. In a couple hours I’ll report on the message we received from Apple and what we sent them and how long it took (is taking)…
Outskirts Press has some exciting products in store for the near future, including an Ipad/iBookstore edition and an “Author App” which will offer authors the opportunity to add a personal iPhone application to their marketing mix. We’re also working on a free Outskirts Press application which should be ready relatively soon. And we’re in preliminary development for a mobile version of our website.
Well, all of this requires some ground work with Apple, and to be honest, it’s kind of a big pain in the butt. Apple appears to be buckling under their own popularity. Approval processes that should take days end up taking weeks. But, be that as it may, if you’re motivated to become an Apple Developer, there are certain things you must do. And here they are:
HOW TO Create an iPhone Developer Account (IOS)
1. Register as a new Apple developer at http://developer.apple.com/programs/start/standard/create.php
It will ask you if you are a new developer or an existing developer, and ask you to further define your intention with Apple. This is pretty easy.
2. Confirm whether you are an individual or a company
Individuals get approved faster. Companies usually have to submit some form of additional documentation to prove they are a business. In our case, Outskirts Press submitted our Articles of Incorporation to Apple.
… more to come next time…
President of Outskirts Press 