Appeal for unfair treatment

I would really have liked this week's blog post to be mainly about something more positive. But my mood have been put down by an extremely unsatisfactory experience, with the app review process for the App Store. But there's still some positive news I have this week, which I will be starting out with. This week's post will be quite the rollercoaster.

This week's progress

Everything about the unfair treatment from Apple's side, will get it's own segment, this segment is all about the positive! There's some good progress happening, but there's also some bad news from this progress, but we will get to that! A quick overview of what I've done in this week is a Version History page and creating a separate backend for production use. Let's take a look at it!

Creating a production backend environment

This is the thing that's both good and bad news. The good news, is that I can work on the backend without any downtime for the users of the app. The bad news, is that I can't migrate the users from the backend in use today, to the production. BUT "fortunately" only people I know have used the app, in the past week since release. But it does also mean that I have taken the app down from the App Store, for now. Mellonn Speak will be back up as soon as this whole thing with App Review is over, read about that later in the blog.

Version history

For me, this is a much anticipated feature, and I'm extremely excited to announce that it will be coming with the next update! How it works, is that every time you edit a transcription there's saved another version of it, and the last ten version is saved for you to access. If anything goes wrong, you will be able to go one version back and recover what's lost. I'm also saving the original version coming out of the AI. Right now there is a bug with Amplify-Flutter, the backend, that I am working with Amazon to the best of my ability to fix. This bug causes me not being able to remove the oldest version when you exceed ten versions. But my hope is that this is fixed before the update comes out.

Help buttons inside the app

Surprise! I've made the help page on this website, you can access from inside the app, but let's be honest, this isn't that convenient. That's why I've now added buttons throughout the pages in the app, that will show a popup telling you what you can do on the current page, and how to do it! I hope this feature can help make the app much more accessible for new users, and as a result reach a broader audience.

Bug fixes and others

I haven't got that much to report on bug fixes, but I am keeping an eye out for bugs encountered by the testers. For an updated look at the known issues you can check out the page for this, where I'm also coming with potential workarounds for current bug, and estimated time to a fix.

But now, what you've probably been waiting for...

The appeal

After last week's absolutely positive experience with the review process, it could only go down from there. Maybe it was too good to be true? Thursday evening last week, I sent out the first update to Mellonn Speak, only changing one thing, the screenshots shown on the App Store page. No changes to the app, no changes to anything other than some visuals. Even though I didn't change anything, I had to go through the review process again. I thought that this wouldn't be too bad, but oh boy I was wrong.

The process on the Google Play Store

To give some context on how this process was on the Play Store, i will quickly go through this. Firstly when I only had to change these screenshots I could go into the section with the Store Page content, and I could change the screenshots. 10 minutes later, the store page was updated with new screenshots. I took 2 minutes of my time, and absolutely no struggles at all.

The intended process on the App Store

Even though this process is much longer and unnecessary than with the Google Play Store, I don't think it's too unfair, but it could definitely be much more streamlined. To change anything on the App Store page, you HAVE to create a new version of the app, in my situation creating a 1.1.1 instead of keeping the 1.1.0. Having to create a whole new version of the app automatically take about 30-45 minutes of my time. But assuming that the review process doesn't meets any bumps on the road, the new screenshots will be displayed on the App Store within about 24 hours.

Okay about 12 minutes vs 24 hours at best, that's a big difference.

My process on the App Store

I would have been totally fine with it taking about 24 hours with coming onto the App Store, but now we're over a week later, and they're still not on the App Store. To be totally honest, I am absolutely furious with how this process have been. Maybe you should be taking this with a grain of salt, because I really do not hope that this is something everyone have to deal with.

Starting off, I created a new version of the app and uploaded it for review on the App Store. This version was to my surprise rejected quite quickly, with a request for more information about the In-App Purchases. Information I have provided in the review process earlier. Firstly I really do not hope that I have to provide this information every single time I update the app. If this is the case, I can not guarantee that the iOS version of Mellonn Speak will be getting frequent updates.

The app was rejected again, but now with another reasoning, stating that the purchase method used in the app have to be In-App Purchases. I replied to this saying that according to the guidelines 3.1.3(e) Services sold that is only consumable MUST use payment methods other than In-App Purchases. I sent the message and waited for a reply, without luck. Three days later, I sent the app to review again, thinking that I would get a reply faster by doing this.

I didn't get a reply, but the app was rejected again, this time with an exact copy of the last rejection. No reply to my message and no other information about why the app doesn't comply with the guidelines. I sent another reply, this time using the Review information notes, and in this one stating that they didn't provide the requested information.

To no one's surprise, the app was rejected again. Again with an exact copy of the rejection, starting to see a pattern? Getting more frustrated with this process, I sent another message to which I haven't gotten a reply to yet. But this time I not only sent this message, I also sent an appeal and marked it as unfair treatment.

To be totally honest I really feel like I'm David vs Goliath. Apple is probably not gonna stop before I've bowed and change the payment process to In-App Purchase, so they can take their cut. I'm not going to do this, at least not before they've provided some actual arguments as to why I should do this. I don't know what to expect to get from this appeal, but I'm hoping they will clarify their case, and at least let me provide my arguments. I'm absolutely sure that I'm operating within their guidelines, and they will have to convince me otherwise, if they want me to change my ways.

All of the above was written thursday, yesterday as of writing and release this post. Today I have just received a message from App Review (NOT on the appeal), but they're asking for a phone number to have a call with me. It is refreshing to actually receive a message from them, that isn't a copy of the last message. The message said that they will call within 3-5 business days, to be honest, this does not get my hopes that much up. They've already set me back over a week, but let's see what happens! I have still not heard from the appeal, but I'm have received a message saying that they've begun looking at it. To get more frequent updates on this, you can go follow my twitter!

See you again next week!

Well what a rollercoaster! I did warn you though..

It's going to be interesting to see where this appeal takes me. I am hopeful, because I'm still sure that I'm following the guidelines as intended. In the next week's time I hop that I will be able to get the app out with the new update. As soon as this happens, I will begin to advertise for it on social media, look out for that!

Before ending this week's post, I would like to take a moment to send my respect and thoughts to everyone who's affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is absolutely horrible and I am absolutely speechless.

See you all next week!