So, PCalc 1.2 was submitted to the App Store last Thursday, and the Apple approval process before it shows up on the store has taken exactly six days for the last four releases. So, I figured it would appear on the store around Wednesday this week. Plenty of time to write some PR and plan my marketing strategy then.
Apparently not.
Woke up this morning to find the “Ready for Sale” email from Apple sitting smiling in my inbox. So, four days from submission to being on the store this time, and that included a weekend.
Given that developers have been so unhappy about how long the submission process takes, it seems somewhat churlish to complain about the process getting faster, but it’s still annoyingly unpredictable. At least it didn’t hit on a Sunday morning I guess.
I think Apple should at least give you an ETA when you submit something to the store, and perhaps daily updates as the submission queue changes. It would be nice to get a heads-up about when your software is going to be available to the public.
I’m currently scrambling to update the website with the 1.2 information. I’ve also submitted new screenshots via iTunes Connect and I’ve done the “Availability Trick” to hopefully move PCalc onto the front page of Utilities on the store. So far the store hasn’t updated with any of my changes, but fingers crossed that will happen soon and I can do a bit better from this release than I did with 1.1.
I’ll send out my PR this afternoon, as soon as I’ve actually written it. Wish me luck!
UPDATE
Ok, App Store has updated with metadata changes, and we are currently the second app listed on the front page of Utilities on the store on iTunes. Excellent! Oddly though, still not listed on front page of the phone store. I’ve seen changes happen on one before the other, so it might just be lag between different servers. We’ll see. Anyway, stage one completed – PCalc is up and visible on the store.
UPDATE 2
PCalc now listed as the first app in the Utilities section on the phone store. Result! Now all I need is to get some PR out this afternoon and we’ll see what difference this all makes to sales today. Feeling good…