In December Apple approved the 2013 release of our NYPD Patrol Guide App, and we thought that the rest of our releases for 2013 would go smoothly. In fact, our NYPD Patrol Guide has been in the top 50 reference apps since its release, however just a couple of weeks later Apple rejected the 2013 release of our NY Penal Law and NY Vehicle and Traffic Law Apps, calling them spam. This is despite the fact that we have been successfully selling these same apps in Apple’s store since 2009 to very favorable reviews and Apple has demoed and used our apps as a selling point when meeting with law enforcement agencies.
We have been in communication with Apple since then trying to resolve this without much luck. Actually, calling it communication is being generous, since Apple has not been getting back to us. On January 15th we were told that a representative from Apple would call us within 3 days to discuss our 2013 Apps, but we have not yet heard from anyone. We sent another message to Apple a few days ago about the importance of getting these releases out in a timely manner, but still have not heard back.
The arbitrary and capricious nature of Apple’s review process is making it impossible for us to do business and support our customers. We still hope that this can be resolved and that Apple will in fact get back to us, but having our apps sit in limbo for a month or more does not help anybody.
So that we would not be completely dependent on the changing whims of one reviewer or another at Apple in 2012 we decided to create Android releases of our apps as well. The good news here is that we decide what to release and when to release it, and the customer decides if it will be a successful product or not. There isn’t someone like an Apple Reviewer getting in between us and our customers arbitrarily keeping our customers from getting new releases that they want to have.
While we still hope to hear back from Apple and to be able to resolve this, if you would like timely releases and updates of our apps, please be aware that an Android tablet or phone is an option.
