iPhone app developers’ wows: What to do if your application is not approved after weeks?

Due to lack of transparency in Apple’s iPhone application approval process, confusion and unrest is heightening for developers whose applications remain unapproved for a long time. Even after a long wait there is always a possibility that your application could be rejected anytime. For some, the wait extends to a painful one full month. Lately, the waiting time has become equal for flashlight applications and some socially useful applications like the AMBER Alert. 

The developer of AMBER Alert has to wait for about a month without getting any rejection or approval notice from Apple. Jonathan Zdziarski the developer of the application did something out of frustration and anger to expedite the process and it worked. He wrote a long letter to Apple, Inc Executive Team and Steve Jobs.

The letter voiced his concerns on what has happened to his socially useful application, AMBER Alert? Here is the description of the application excerpted from the letter:

This letter is to make you aware of an application I’ve volunteered my time to engineer with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children – AMBER Alert.This App Store application has the potential to revolutionize how missing children are reported to law enforcement. By using the iPhone’s GPS and some geo-analytics, we’re able to build a number of automated logistics tools and quickly relay sightings to law enforcement agencies.

In the same letter, Zdziarski termed Apple’s approval process as “discriminating and opaque” and suggested that if the attitude continues, Apple is advocating a policy to drive away developers to competing platforms such as, Android, BlackBerry and recently launched Cydia Store. 

He published the open letter on his personal blog and voila, in the next few days, Amber Alert got approved following many protest posts on blogs and websites. Zdziarski’s emotional letter got the attention of fellow developers and iPhone users’ community. Here are the lines in the letter that moved Apple:

If I were the parent of one of these missing children, I would be beside myself with anger over Apple’s apparent lack of interest in this application. The reprobate and fearful world these children are surviving in – if they are still surviving – may very well be prolonged because of Apple’s lack of interest in independent developers like me.   

Should Apple really wait for such angry outpour to get applications approved?

For now, if you are a developer and if your application has been in the review queue for too long, shoot this kind of long email to Apple. The success rate could be higher for exciting, useful and unique applications. There never is harm in trying every possible steps to see your application in the App Store. Apple could be waiting for your letter to acknowledge that your application is indeed unique and useful.

If Apple Executive Team and Steve Jobs ever read the full content of the letter they would by now have realized that something is really going wrong. We would all see the results soon. It’s good to know that the application for tracking missing children in the US , AMBER Alert finally made it to the App Store.