Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

We’ve spent a lot of time complaining about the app store approval process. But after reading about this case on TechCrunch, we can’t point the finger in that direction. Kuan Yong created a Twitter app (do we really need another?) called Tweetspotter but received a notice saying:

Hello Kuan,

Your application, TweetSpotter, cannot be posted to the App Store at this time because it does not achieve the core functionality described in your marketing materials, or release notes. Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.5.

The user could not sign in with the demo account provided, please see the attached screenshot. In addition, though multiple Twitter accounts were used, the user still could not sign in. This review was conducted on iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 5.

In order for your application to be reconsidered for the App Store, please resolve this issue and upload your new binary to iTunes Connect.

Should you require more assistance with resolving this issue, Apple Developer Technical Support is available to provide direct one-on-one support for discrete code-level questions. Please be sure to include any crash logs, screenshots or steps to reproduce this issue in your request.

It turns out the coding was fine, but Twitter was down for a scheduled maintenance so no one could sign in. With the number of apps that have to go through the approval process, we don’t blame the reviewer for not knowing Twitter was down. The developer should have thought about that in advance, and if you’re submitting an app you should too. And, as a savvy TC fan commented, the app should have had a more specific error message signaling Twitter was off-line.