I'm curious what kind of day-to-day problems game devs encounter while working with Xcode, Unity, or any other platform. I also have a few specific questions: 1. App store review process. What kind of responses do you usually get back from Apple? How specific/helpful are they? (I've heard this has gone up from a 7 day to about 11-12 day wait now...) 2. Beta testing. How do you connect to testers, and what kind of testing feedback do you usually get back? 3. Performance. What do you use to profile your app, get crash reports, etc.? What do you like and not like about your tools? Thanks!
First off I am guessing you are thinking about or newer to developing so welcome. Itunes is running about 11-30 plus days depending on how many other apps you have submitted. the first few apps take the longest. As far as beta testers i have used the forums here, sought out other games that may be similar to mine and gone to their fan page to see if anyone wants to test the app and finally reached out to the review sites. You always have friends and other developer as well that are usually willing to check out an app and provide feedback. hope that helps and good luck!
Average review time right now is about 8 days: http://reviewtimes.shinydevelopment.com/ Of course, that is average. You could see more or less.
Proper taxes in different countries could be pain in the ass as well, particulary when you are earning some real money.
Don't know for sure. More detailed review process? Fewer people to review apps? The trend has definitely been coming down though if you look at the graph.
Theoretically, I'll let Paul Graham speak my mind, about what went wrong, and how could it be improved. But practically, I know its a wild world out there. There are infinite possibilities, every environment has its own set of rules. It could be Xcode vs Eclipse, or C++ vs ObjC or Mac vs PC. The only key to survival is adaption. Like, in Animal Farm after the rebellion, Old Benjamin gave 0 Fs. And when asked how he saw the change in the system, he would always say "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey". That's the wisdom I would like to follow.
So when Apple rejects your App Store submissions, what are the usual reasons, if they give you one? Is it usually a Human Interface Guideline violation, or accidentally using an internal API, etc.? Just trying to get a feel for the waters.
I've just published only one of my own app, that went two times through the review system, and fortunately both the times it went down smoothly. I took around 12 days both the time. For my client projects, I've seen some weird rejections. Like, an app update getting rejected for some rule that was broken all the time, just that they pointed it out now and I never knew about it. But, their emails were good enough to get the hint to what to change. The tough part is explaining the client. Most of the rejections are due to some change in policy, or it seems to me. So far I've never seen any Human Interface guideline or internal API violation, because I try to be as safe as possible by reading the Apple docs as much as possible.