Even the updates take about a week. It can become frustrating at times especially when I can submit an update for google play at 2am on a Saturday night and it will be updated by the time I wake up Sunday morning.
Most of the time is 'waiting for review' as there are a *LOT* of apps being submitted every day. Then each app has to be fully reviewed and checked that it doesn't crash, use Apple's APIs incorrectly or break any one of the app standards rules. That has to be manually tested by someone so takes time. Especially if it's a complex app. The reason for all this is (in theory) to give App Store users the reassurance that apps they download from the store are safe to use and won't do anything untoward.
It might be frustrating but compared to console approval processes, Apple is a breeze, both in terms of them approving stuff quickly and not being too fussy.
for me it took a week, and my game had a fatal error so my launch day where a total failure... but i fixed the bug and asked for an expedited review, and the next day it where reviewed and approved (after a reject of one of my screenshots that had the "F" word in it..) i think they do a good work
API usage is checked at the time of submission via automated processes. The review process seems to be focused at inspecting screenshots and metadata to catch anything potentially offensive, like pictures of guns. I've never had Apple actually catch an application bug or reject an app for crashing - don't count on them to do this.
Apple should hire more people to work on the approving of apps. To wait one week or more is too long. Also they are too picky with rejections. One word wrong in the description and the app is rejected. They could remvove the word from the descritpion and approve the app instead. Anyhow Apple app review time is too long.
No Apple shouldn't be editing descriptions for the developer. It is up to the developer if they want to change the wording/remove the word etc. Taking that creative control could end up in the description not matching the developers intention.
You might not have, but I have (quite obscure crashes too) as well as API features that can't be accessed from obvious menus within the game (which is why it's always worth adding in the notes if you have any secret power user features). I've been doing this since 2008 and seen a lot of different ways Apple can catch something that they think might cause problems for users.
In our experience there is a very consistent pattern over the last 6 years. * Submit app * Waiting for review for 5 days (quite consistent on average over the years) * App enters review * Wait minutes to a few hours * App is approved Clearly very little actual testing happens. Though some does as we have been rejected on a couple of occasions for actual functionality and/or a crash on a device we failed to test everything on. I don't understand why they have the 5 day holding period before reviewing.
There's a queue of apps before they get to yours. There's automated testing after upload, I guess that falls under "waiting for review". Real humans can only do so much.
I don't think it's that simple. We have seen this pattern for 6 years with something like 100 (mostly updates), any time of year. How could there possibly be always almost exactly 5 days worth of backlog? If they wanted to shorten the backlog they'd just have to hire a few more reviewers. For some reason they keep just enough reviewers on staff to maintain this artificial 5 day delay. And to me, that's weird and frustrating.
If Apple hired enough extra reviewers based on the current submission load to eliminate the wait time entirely, then it still wouldn't be enough, because if the wait time reduced, then people would submit updates much more frequently. Not sure how big the multiplier effect would be, but I suspect it'd be substantial.
I suspect it is more because it is a multi-person review with different people reviewing different parts. They have never really got below 5 days but has blown out in the other direction.
If they did it quicker we would all submit updates more often, creating more reviews they need to do! They don't spend a week reviewing, they let it sit for several days and then review it. Why? a) Give you time to realize that bug you forgot so you can pull the release fix and resubmit; b) You know it will take a week, so you plan better and test more; c) Its a deliberate bottle neck to control the rate at which updates are submitted.
I think there is a lot of apps being submitted. It's so frustrating especially when you start making changes during the wait period and the temptation to cancel and re-submit is there! My game took around 4 days in the end but I wasted about a month cancelling and fixing bugs in found while it was waiting for review!