Q: How long does the application for the iPhone developer program take?
devprogram by sho
For those of you who are developing iPhone apps, you might be wondering how long it takes for Apple to get back to you once you apply for the developer program. For us, it took about six weeks.
I am guessing that this period isn’t a big deal for most people. You need the license to (a) download your software to the iPhone, and (b) sell your software on the iTunes store. Most developers will use the simulator in the beginning, so there is usually plenty of time to wait for your license.
In our case, we had been using Mike’s personal developer license. It was only when we were getting ready for launch that we decided to get a new license tied to the name “Metaspark”, because we wanted that name to show up as the publisher in the iTunes store, and not “Michael Schiff”. So our decision to get a new developer license was kind of last minute.
Because we were in a rush, it was kind of frustrating not knowing how long the process would take. For those of you in the same boat, here is a timeline (below the fold):
Oct 6 – Applied to the Apple iPhone developer program
Oct 6 – Wrote email to Apple saying “oops.. I am a bonehead and I think I might have closed my browser before hitting send. Could you verify that you got my application?”
Oct 7 –
Oct 8 –
Oct 9 –
Oct 10 –
Oct 11 –
Oct 12 –
Oct 13 – Sent email to Apple again asking if they got my form.
Oct 14 –
Oct 15 –
Oct 16 –
Oct 17 – Got a letter from Apple asking for documents that prove we are legitimately using the name “Metaspark” for business
Oct 17 – Faxed the documentation to Apple.
Oct 18 –
Oct 19 –
Oct 20 –
Oct 21 –
Oct 22 – Sent email to Apple asking if they got the fax
Oct 23 –
Oct 24 –
Oct 25 –
Oct 26 –
Oct 27 –
Oct 28 –
Oct 29 – Email from apple saying “Yes, we got the fax.”
Oct 30 -
Oct 31 -
Nov 1 -
Nov 2 -
Nov 3 -
Nov 4 -
Nov 5 -
Nov 6 -
Nov 7 -
Nov 8 -
Nov 9 -
Nov 10 -
Nov 11 -
Nov 12 -
Nov 13 -
Nov 14 – Email to Apple asking they could hurry it up, because we were nearly ready to submit our software to the iTunes store.
Nov 15 –
Nov 16 –
Nov 17 –
Nov 18 – Email from Apple saying we had been accepted to the developer program.
So there you have it. In the end, we had more bugs to fix than we thought, so we never had to make a decision about whether to launch on the store with the old license or wait for the new license. Anyway, for those of you who are still waiting, hang on tight!
Any idea when Note*Spark will hit the App store?
Soon. We are days away from giving it over to Apple and after that, it’s really up to them. Probably a few weeks. I will post on this blog when it is out, of course.