There has been a lot of chatter on the interweb recently about Phil Schiller getting involved and helping developers to resolve App Store approval issues, with the most recent being the post over on Tech Crunch where Schiller (Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing) and Phil Shoemaker (Apple’s Director of Application Technology) have personally helped resolve issues and approve an app called Rising Card.
Well it is not just the dev's that Schiller and Shoemaker have been emailing, but also yours truly.
After 7 weeks of on off email communications between Schiller, Shoemaker and myself I have decided to break my silence, not to raise the profile of this site (I could have done this weeks ago), but to let the iPhone community know that Apple are listening to our voices, even if their responses are not quick enough for most of us.
It all started back on the 29th June this year following my "iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade warning!!" post and subsequent "Broken iPhone photo apps" post I became so frustrated that I could not upgrade my iPhone 3G to OS 3.0 without loosing some of my apps, that I emailed Phil Schiller direct.
"Hi Phil
I am sorry I find myself having to email you directly regarding compatibility issues with the new iPhone 3.0 OS and some photo apps, but a felt the problems is so serious that only those at the top should deal with it. There are a number of photo apps that I, and I am sure many thousands of other iPhone owners have purchased from the AppStore that are not compatible with the new OS. Whilst I understand and accept it is the responsibility of the app developer to update their apps to work with 3.0, it has come to my attention that Apple are blocking a number of developers updates. If true and Apple are blocking established apps from working with OS 3.0, then I would like to know what Apple plan to do to the many thousands of app owners whose apps no longer work?
Please could you advise if the apps that had previously been approved many times (as each revision has to be approved) and are currently not being approved, will be approved? An example app would be QuadCamera.
If Apple have changed the approval process and these apps will now never be approved, then please can you advise how you (Apple) intend to compensate me and the thousands of other loyal Apple customers out there?"
To be honest when I sent this email I didn't expect a reply, so imagine my surprise when less than 24hrs later I got a short but assuring reply from Phil Schiller saying "I appreciate the direct email", and "We are investigating this issue".
Time went by and very little seemed to be happening with the broken apps or the overall approval process, so on the 12th July I decided to ping Phil a follow up email.
"Hi Phil
It has now been 2 weeks since I emailed you regarding the issue over Apple refusing to allow some developers to update their iPhone photo apps to work under OS 3.0. I am aware of several developers that are hitting a brick wall trying to resolve this issue with Apple, and whilst some developers have taken the action of removing their apps from the AppStore so as not to infuriate their/your customers who buy an app that has been approved only to find it does not work. A good example of an app that remains in the number one spot in the UK is Camera Zoom, however this app does NOT work under OS 3.0 and there are lots of irate customers writing bad reviews. Whilst this app is not very good (in my opinion) the developer has not removed it and in my opinion Apple are allowing their customers to be ripped off. Now in the UK this breaks the sale of goods act, as the product has to be fit for the purpose, and this app clearly isn't. Now whilst the developer should remove the app, it is not actually his fault that you (Apple) will not approve his updated version due to policy change.
Please can I ask you to address this issue with some urgency, as this issue is damaging Apple's reputation in this section of the market place, and will only drive user to jailbreak their iPhones, something that I do not agree with."
Well time went by, and this emailed remained unanswered, so on the 20th July I resent this email, which again remained unanswered.
Not one to give up I decided I needed to grab Phil's attention (after all I thought his inbox must be full of similar emails), so on the 1st August I sent an email titled "App Approval Farce", which I am not posting as it contains too many criticisms, and I don't want to be forced to take down this post. Needless to say this email caught Phil's attention, and following a brief exchange of emails Phil Shoemaker was asked to assist with the issues I had raised.
Again after several exchanges of emails where I raised individual app issues with Shoemaker, I got an encouraging reply (see extracts below).
"Thanks for the email. Phil and I worked on a plan to get camera apps into the store that were currently broken in 3.0" "we have since provided these developers a way to move forward with 3.1 and are enforcing this. Any existing applications that are working properly in 3.0, or new applications, are not getting approved at this time."
"Thus, applications like xxxx xxxx, which are new applications, are not going to get approved until we release 3.1 *and* the developer has updated their application to use 3.1. At that time, we will allow all applications that properly use the documented camera APIs, into the store, while removing the ones that do not."
It is this last statement from Shoemaker that promises to shake up and sort out the photo category in the App Store once and for all, well that's provided the app approvers stick to their guidelines.
Monday, June 21, 2010 at 7:32PM | 
Many of you will remember last years upgrade from iPhone OS 2 to OS 3, and the fallout with apps not working correctly, or at all. Following my recent post "OS 4.0, broken apps, and a cautionary tale", blog reader 'Tomba' posted a list of apps that he/she had tested with Apple's final release candidate of the iPhone OS.