Oh, no I hear you cry, not another battery level app.
Well, yes it is another battery level app, but this one does have a bit of a story behind it and that story is the inconsistency of Apple's approval process:
For more than the last month, this app has been getting rejection e-mails from the App Store. The crime? Originally, it showed the remaining time for several common tasks such as browsing the web. This is against Apple's policies apparently: We initially just got a rejection e-mail that said because
it provides to the user potentially inaccurate diagnostic functionality for iPhone OS devices.
Having no idea what the problem was, we removed the bit that recognised and displayed the device type and resubmitted it. Another rejection.
Whilst we were getting rejected, several battery apps did appear that showed the remaining time left for common tasks, so we thought "it can't be that we're showing remaining time". We then changed the name from My Battery Status to My Battery Level and re-submitted. Nope, it was rejected again
By this time, I was getting frustrated and asked Apple why they were rejecting it.
I got the following information from them:
Attempting to inform the user with device
power statistics based on percentages is strictly diagnostic and
there is currently no publicly available infrastructure to support
diagnostic analysis. This may result in your app reporting
potentially inaccurate information which could lead to user
confusion.
I replied that we were using the official API in 3.0, and the published figures from Apple to calculate approximate time remaining. Their reply?
There is currently no publicly available infrastructure to support
diagnostic analysis in regards to time remaining for certain device
functions. This may result in your app reporting potentially
inaccurate information which could lead to user confusion. You may
include a battery percentage remaining, but not specific time
remaining.
So, there we had it in black and white: They would not approve the app because it showed the remaining time for common tasks. I was pretty confused by this point because several new apps had hit the App store that did exactly this, including the (at the time) number one in the utility category. I sent Apple an e-mail explaining this and asking why there wasn't a level playing field and their reply was:
Thank you for this information.
That was the sum total of their reply: One sentence thanking me but no information about why they repeatedly rejected our app and simultaneously approved others that did exactly what we were getting rejected for
At this point, it became obvious we were not going to get the app approved if we left the remaining time stuff in it, so we changed it to remove that and replace it with free memory information instead. We resubmitted it and it was approved yesterday
So, that's it really - a story of Apple's inconsistencies and an app that has probably missed the boat now for it's genre
If you're still reading by this stage and want to get the app, it's available here
Well, yes it is another battery level app, but this one does have a bit of a story behind it and that story is the inconsistency of Apple's approval process:
For more than the last month, this app has been getting rejection e-mails from the App Store. The crime? Originally, it showed the remaining time for several common tasks such as browsing the web. This is against Apple's policies apparently: We initially just got a rejection e-mail that said because
it provides to the user potentially inaccurate diagnostic functionality for iPhone OS devices.
Having no idea what the problem was, we removed the bit that recognised and displayed the device type and resubmitted it. Another rejection.
Whilst we were getting rejected, several battery apps did appear that showed the remaining time left for common tasks, so we thought "it can't be that we're showing remaining time". We then changed the name from My Battery Status to My Battery Level and re-submitted. Nope, it was rejected again
By this time, I was getting frustrated and asked Apple why they were rejecting it.
I got the following information from them:
Attempting to inform the user with device
power statistics based on percentages is strictly diagnostic and
there is currently no publicly available infrastructure to support
diagnostic analysis. This may result in your app reporting
potentially inaccurate information which could lead to user
confusion.
I replied that we were using the official API in 3.0, and the published figures from Apple to calculate approximate time remaining. Their reply?
There is currently no publicly available infrastructure to support
diagnostic analysis in regards to time remaining for certain device
functions. This may result in your app reporting potentially
inaccurate information which could lead to user confusion. You may
include a battery percentage remaining, but not specific time
remaining.
So, there we had it in black and white: They would not approve the app because it showed the remaining time for common tasks. I was pretty confused by this point because several new apps had hit the App store that did exactly this, including the (at the time) number one in the utility category. I sent Apple an e-mail explaining this and asking why there wasn't a level playing field and their reply was:
Thank you for this information.
That was the sum total of their reply: One sentence thanking me but no information about why they repeatedly rejected our app and simultaneously approved others that did exactly what we were getting rejected for
At this point, it became obvious we were not going to get the app approved if we left the remaining time stuff in it, so we changed it to remove that and replace it with free memory information instead. We resubmitted it and it was approved yesterday
So, that's it really - a story of Apple's inconsistencies and an app that has probably missed the boat now for it's genre
If you're still reading by this stage and want to get the app, it's available here