Tag: apple developer

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Applying for Apple Developer Certification

Good news regarding our enrollment in the Apple Development certification fiasco that I’ve been blogging about over the past several posts.  I finally spoke with a new human being at Apple.  Apparently there were two hiccups in our enrollment.

1.  The online enrollment form asked for the name under which our Apps would be published, so we entered Outskirts Press.  However, our Articles of Incorporation lists our company name as Outskirts Press, Inc.   That missing “Inc” was unacceptable, according to Apple.

2. The online enrollment form asked for our company address, which we entered as our current address. However, our Articles of Incorporation lists our company address as it was 8 years ago (you know… when the papers were filed).  Even though we’d move due to growth, that different address was unacceptable according to Apple. 

Are both these hiccups ridiculous? Of course they are.  But — and this seems to be a unique perspective for a customer to have in this day and age– Apple is entitled to run its business any way that it wants; and from their point of view, I can see the need to require an exact match between official documentation and online data input — otherwise, they have no means of verifying that someone is who they say they are online.

So, at their request, I re-enrolled from the beginning again, matching the exact information on our forms. Does that make our address inaccurate? Yes; but the nice advisor I spoke with assured me I could correct it once the enrollment was approved.   She also said she would expedite my certification.  We’ll keep you posted on what that means…

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Communicating with Apple

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.

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Apple developer program enrollment – part 5

Approximately 5 weeks after originally beginning the Apple Developer enrollment, and waiting, and waiting, and contacting their support via their online form, I received an email from an actual human being at Apple that said:

Hello Brent,

We are currently in the process of reviewing your iOS Developer Program Developer Program enrollment information.

Please know that after reviewing your faxed documentation, we noticed that the document you sent in did not hold a state seal or stamp that states received or accepted.  We ask that you please fax one of the following which has the state seal or valid stamp located on the document:

Articles of incorporations

Business license

Certificate of Formation

Charter documents

Partnership papers

Reseller or vendor license

Operating Agreement

 Please include your Enrollment ID and your main company corporate telephone number on the cover page.   PLEASE NOTE: In order to avoid any unnecessary delays, please ensure that you fax us the relevant documents for ”Outskirts Press”  and that the name and address information matches the information upon enrollment. We are unable to process enrollments unless the business documents provided correspond with your enrollment information.

Of course, the document I had faxed did have the state stamp receipt as requested, and being that it was 8 years old, there was a logical explanation for why the address would be different (we moved), so stay tuned tomorrow for my diplomatic response…

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Apple developer program – continued – part 4

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)…

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How to Become an Apple Developer – Part 3

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).

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Apple Developer Program – Applying for – Part 2

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)…

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How to Apply for Apple Developer Certification – Part 1

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…