7 ms·

Windows 8 Doesn’t Want Your App. Try Again Later

173 points by sutro 14y ago

raverbashing 14y ago
Easy Don't waste your time with MS (or Apple, or anyone for that matter) They already cost more of your time than you can make back. Typical MS thinking all you need is a shallow copy of something to be successful. Oh well, it worked for them a couple of times.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Perhaps the Windows 8 Store is a "shallow copy" of the Mac/iOS App Store. But the Windows 8 experience as a whole certainly isn't.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    Exactly what I meant. The main problem with Windows 8 is not the innovation (or lack of), but the legacy elements and the awkwardness resulting from it.
Sumaso 14y ago
Ah the pains of deploying an app store. I can't even count how many articles I've read about the apple app store rejecting someone's app for some reason or another. If you want a closed eco systems, these are the types of growing pains your going to have to go through.
spqr 14y ago
Windows 8 Doesn't Want Your Bugridden App There - I fixed the title for you.
unwind 14y ago
It took a click on the self-named application link in the beginning of the (very long) article, and some reading, before the name finally clicked. Memorylage is a portmanteau of "memory" and "collage", since the application shows a collage of your digital images. Or, hm, since "memory" is actually fully in there, perhaps that disqualifies it as a portmanteau ... then it might be a blend, instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend).
metabrew 14y ago
tl;dr - submitting stuff to app stores can be a nightmare, regardless of who runs the app store.
- mtgx 14y ago
  I've heard you can get your app and its updates published on the Play Store almost immediately, or within a day.
  - CodeCube 14y ago
    Usually takes about an hour to be replicated out to the store when you upload an APK ... but no humans are involved in that process.
wrath 14y ago
Instead of these negative articles I'd like to see people write articles helping other have a better experience then they had. You're on the cutting edge of technology and the consequence is that you'll have problems. I've never personally submitted an app to an appstore but from what I've read Apple had similar problems when they first launched.
- simonw 14y ago
  There was lots of useful advice in this article about getting through the approval process.
mgkimsal 14y ago
What's so odd about all this is that lack of transparency why things fail was (is?) a huge issue in the Apple App Store process, and MS has had years to learn about what went wrong with the Apple process, and design around those issues. They seem to have baked those faults in to their own process. "We're backed up with submissions". WTF? They've been doing roadshows and having dev evangelists push the heck out of "develop apps for the app store!" messaging. That's fine. Staff up appropriately. For a company who understands this is a pivot, they need momentum, good press, etc., plus have had years watching Apple's mistakes in this area - there's just no excuse for not staffing (or ramping up quickly) on the app store processing.
- coderdude 14y ago
  >MS has had years to learn about what went wrong with the Apple process, and design around those issues. All that time spent learning about what and why Apple does what they do might have brought them to the conclusion that they ought to be doing the same thing. Or maybe they're "backed up" while they take it all in, figure out what's crap and what's not crap, create a good initial sorting of non-crap -> crap, and then open the flood gates a little more. You have to imagine that they've just suddenly become inundated by thousands (10s of thousands? More?) submissions and the majority of them will be awful crapware that needs to be sifted through. It takes a lot of time I'm sure -- I don't care how many people you put on staff.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    "All that time spent learning about what and why Apple does what they do might have brought them to the conclusion that they ought to be doing the same thing." I fear that conclusion. But, really... concluding that courting developers pissed off with an arbitrary opaque process by giving them the same arbitrary opaque process makes sense to ... who? "You have to imagine that they've just suddenly become inundated by thousands (10s of thousands? More?) submissions and the majority of them will be awful crapware that needs to be sifted through. " But... they've had more than a year to prepare for it, they need people to want to write for this platform (ios/android still have a the lion's mindshare), and MS is one of the few companies that could afford (financially) to make this experience better than it has. Stop the dividend payouts for a few quarters and use that money to beef up what they seem to be saying is the new direction of the company.
ja27 14y ago
I haven't submitted a Windows 8 app yet (soon) but I've had apps rejected by Apple and Nook. I have to say that Apple's rejections so far have been very clear on what needs to change. Nook has been 50-50. One rejection was clear, but another just gave me a useless numeric code. To defend Microsoft a little bit, at least you have developer evangelists available to help escalate things, even if that isn't working in this case.
- jarjoura 14y ago
  Apple also has evangelists who will help escalate/interpret things.
n9com 14y ago
Most of the rejections were due to problems with your app. We have found the Microsoft team and review process to be excellent - far better than anything we have experienced before. They go beyond the call of duty to help developers get their app onto the store and even give some great feedback on how the app could be even better. I guess it depends on who you deal with, but our personal experience in releasing our edutainment app called Magic Math ( http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/magic-math/ba5eb1c6-7592-45ca-80cc-60c1c53128a5 http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/magic-math/ba5eb1... ) was fantastic.
- OmIsMyShield 14y ago
  > Most of the rejections were due to problems with your app Agree, and the article seems to acknowledge this. Seems that the feedback wasn't detailed enough, though. I'd be interested to know if you found the feedback to be better, and theories about the causes of the disparity if that is the case?
  - n9com 14y ago
    Our app was approved first time, but we had a few 'pre-reviews' where they gave us early feedback so that when it came to the actual review, it went through smoothly, took less than 5 days to get approved.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > Most of the rejections were due to problems with your app. Congratulation on completely and utterly missing TFA's point.
lini 14y ago
I can relate a bit about this article and the Windows Store submission process - I have been using it since the end of July. The requirements mentioned in the post (1.2, 3.2, 3.8, etc.) are part of a big document that tries to clearly outline what an app should and shouldn't do. They are defined rather well, but sometimes will leave you wandering what the hell is going on. I submitted an HTML app that was accepted, then after some minor changes failed validation the second time I submitted it. The problem was "Requirement 3.2: The app crashes", however, nothing I changed could cause a crash. I resubmitted the app with a bumped version and no other changes and it passed validation the second time. This led me to believe that MS are either still fixing bugs in the certification process or that my app ended up on a faulty test device that crashed. Still, I would LOVE IT if MS provided actual stack trace or other useful information if a crash occurs. The biggest problem with the Store right now is the time it takes to pass a new release. In the last couple of days the Microsoft built-in applications (video, finance, sports) have been updated multiple times, but my last submission took 5 days to pass the Content Compliance step. If Microsoft wants more apps in the Store, they need to scale up their review/certification infrastructure and team.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  At the very least, the debug console output as a text file would be helpful, no?
  - lini 14y ago
    BTW they give you reports, but only if the crash was in an already approved app that is in the Store[1]. My point was that such information should be available during the certification process as well. [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/27/improving-apps-with-quality-reports.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/27/impr...
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  "Requirement 3.2: The app crashes" Really? They've listed a 'requirement' as 'app crashes'?
mariusmg 14y ago
There are 2 big problems with the Windows Store submission right now: - it takes a LOT of time to get a answer. From my experience it took 2 weeks (working days) until i got a answer back. - they don't list at first submission ALL of the reasons for which the app "fails". This leads to the following cycle : submit app, wait 2 weeks to get rejected for lame reasons, fix issue in couple hours, submit again, wait 2 weeks etc Hopefully things will improve in the near future but right now trying to get a app into Windows Store is a pretty long and annoying process.
mcherm 14y ago
Look, if Apple can't manage to do a curated app store in a way that "works" for developers, if Microsoft can't manage to do it... maybe a curated app store isn't a good idea. I mean, it's obviously a good idea for whoever curates the app store (they can leverage their power in all kinds of ways), but perhaps the problems for developers is not because these companies are doing it poorly, but just that injecting a review process by a third party between the developer and their customers is NATURALLY bad for developers.
- CookWithMe 14y ago
  Agreed. Release early and often is well known and accepted in software engineering... yet some stores do their best to make that impossible.
- WayneDB 14y ago
  I don't want to have to go through anybody to be able to get my app to my customers. This tendency towards closed-off app stores is really depressing.
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    As a phone user though, I WANT you to be vetted, because I don't want your "stock quote app" to suddenly brick my phone unless I send you $59.99 to get the "fix". I don't trust you. I trust apple. Deal with it.
    - WayneDB 14y ago
      You don't download software off the net unless it's vetted first by Apple? Have you never installed Chrome, Office or Photoshop? Maybe you haven't considered the alternative. It's something that Apple users don't really get much of, but there's a thing called choice. Why can't we have an app store AND allow side-loading? That'd be a nice choice. That way, the people who want to trade freedom for security can do so and the people who want freedom can have it. A third option would be to allow competing app stores (as well as side-loading). You're on the wrong side in the war on general purpose computing. If you want to see general purpose computing go away, by all means...keep trading your freedoms in.
paulbz 14y ago
I've submitted multiple apps to the Windows Store. They're not desperate and they don't want crap, which is why they have a high bar. The problem is the testing procedures aren't always consistent, so something may pass once and get rejected when you do your next update for a bug that existed in a previous version. But, that's the nature of testing - the same thing has happened for us on Apple's app store. Android appears to be the only store that lets you ship anything you want.
- n9com 14y ago
  They don't want crap? Have you seen some of the apps on the Windows Store?
  - paulbz 14y ago
    touché
- masklinn 14y ago
  > The problem is the testing procedures aren't always consistent, so something may pass once and get rejected when you do your next update for a bug that existed in a previous version. That's not even relevant to TFA's point, which is that the review output is so terse and opaque it's not actionable and essentially resulted in him having to bug dozens of people and fine-comb multiple time through the application to find out what the issues were. There wasn't any complex issue, all of them were nigh-trivial (except the D3D one maybe) and TFAA gladly acknowledge this, the issue he outlines is that if the reports had actual information in them it'd have taken him a day to get everything fixed rather than 2 months.
CF_HoneyBadger 14y ago
As a developer (albeit not of Appstore Apps) I can understand the frustration of being told "It crashes" without being told why. However, there was a very interesting comment on the actual blog itself suggesting something along the line of "re-submit the app under a different name". I actually think that may not be that bad of an idea. If you have done as much verification as possible as to the stability and performance of your product, sometimes you have to do some sideways thinking to get it approved by the powers that be. I would like to see (just as an experiment) what would happen if the original developer would try this, and see what happens. The worst thing that could happen is that he could get told no (again).
BinRoo 14y ago
That's really strange. My friends and I from the University of Virginia published a couple apps (total 5 apps) and we each got through on our first round. My app is a simple Truth Table application that reduces boolean algebra http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-US/app/truth-table/9e87b727-55ab-4804-a5a8-17fd7a03e78d http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-US/app/truth-table/9e87b... Our apps didn't required internet connection, so that might explain the success-rate. So I guess if you want your app in he store as soon as possible, build version 1.0 without internet features.
love4code 14y ago
I have an app in the Windows Store. The author of the post is complaining, but he should read the manual before submitting his app. Excluding CurrentAppSimulator is documented in docs a thousand times. Stop whining, fix your crashing app and don't submit it until its working. Why would they want your crashing buggy app on the day of launch?
dscrd 14y ago
I really don't get why people continue to bang their heads against the wall that is Microsoft. We have plenty of better options, why them?
itsclearleon 14y ago
At this point it's not about the amount of apps they have in the store. It's about the quality of apps in the store. If they have 2 million apps an 1.9 million are horrible it will make Microsoft look cheap and generic. If they have 1000 apps that are awesome it will make them seem solid, legit and tactful. This guy should be able to clean out his own code base and make it up to par with the app stores expectation. They have pretty clear guidelines and he's not meeting them.
Zaheer 14y ago
I don't think the Apple AppStore is much better. I recently submitted an app and got back a very generic message saying what was wrong with my app. No help at all in trying to figure out what the problem really is.
TallGuyShort 14y ago
This is not an isolated case. I heard two reports from Microsoft employees this morning of their own apps being repeatedly rejected for weeks with little transparency.
bringking 14y ago
I have to admit I have had some problems with submitting to the Windows Phone 7 app store, however when the app failed certification the tester included step by step walkthroughs on how re-create the problem. I was generally able to recreate the problem. However, more than a few times I could not and just re-submitted, and it passed. :/
CodeCube 14y ago
I didn't have quite as bad an experience submitting my app (http://codecube.net/2012/09/introducing-viewer-for-khan-academy-windows-8/ http://codecube.net/2012/09/introducing-viewer-for-khan-acad...) to the w8 store. But it did fail the first time and I was quite annoyed at the reason. It failed for requirement 4.1.1: "If your app has the technical ability to transmit any user's personal information, you must maintain a privacy policy. You must provide access to your privacy policy in the Description page of your app, as well as in the app’s settings as displayed in the Windows Settings charm." Now, my app is open source, and doesn't collect any user information whatsoever. And not only that, but the app's meta data during submission has an optional field for a privacy policy URL. So I just ginned up a quick privacy policy that says we don't capture any personal info (http://codecube.net/khanacademy/privacy/ http://codecube.net/khanacademy/privacy/), added it to the settings charm, and resubmitted. It passed. But it was annoying.
- madoublet 14y ago
  Exact same problem I had. I am waiting for approval right now. If they are going to require a privacy policy, why not include it by default when you start a project? And, why do you have to go through another 7 day waiting period when you submit the app again. Shouldn't re-submissions be fast tracked?
  - NeutronBoy 14y ago
    > If they are going to require a privacy policy, why not include it by default when you start a project? They might include a blank one, but I imagine they tried to aviod including a boiler-plate policy, otherwise you'd probably find 95% of app submissions would just use the template.
- jpatte 14y ago
  Exact same problem here too. We submitted a game which transmits no information whatsoever, so we didn't feel the need to provide a pivacy policy. Yet they made us submit again to fix just that. I think it's safe to assume that every app should provide a privacy policy by default, just in case.
panda_person 14y ago
I downloaded the RTM through Dreamspark, because Dreamspark students get a free Windows Store account (I have some asp.net and WP7 apps I wanted to port over to Win 8). Turns out, you still have to submit a credit card even if you have a Dreamspark account, which instantly turned me off.
shmerl 14y ago
> Try Again Later I'd say - dump MS. Try something that treats developers as humans.
jamesjguthrie 14y ago
I think now, I will wait maybe 6 months before building anything for the Windows Store.
riviera 14y ago
Tell me about this. I got 3 rejections, the last 2 about point 3.2 ("the app crashes"), after neither anyone in my team nor at our MS contact team was able to experience any problems. And the only feedback was a PDF showing a snapshot of the Windows desktop and some text that the JPEG compression had rendered unreadable. I thought it was a joke. Luckily a support person was nice enough to spend time reviewing the app and helped me discover the problem. Which was due to unclear and misleading expectations about the review process. Oh well...
Aaronontheweb 14y ago
If the OP reads HN, send me an email to aaron AT markedup DOT com I used to work on the evangelism team in the US for Microsoft (left in August to start my own company;) I can connect you with folks who can help you with the certification process.
- masklinn 14y ago
  The article notes that he already got plenty of connections throughout the process.
jheriko 14y ago
I agree that the store process is not great in providing feedback - however several of the problems mentioned could have been mitigated by good practice.

173 points by sutro 14y ago

Easy Don't waste your time with MS (or Apple, or anyone for that matter) They already cost more of your time than you can make back. Typical MS thinking all you need is a shallow copy of something to be successful. Oh well, it worked for them a couple of times.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Perhaps the Windows 8 Store is a "shallow copy" of the Mac/iOS App Store. But the Windows 8 experience as a whole certainly isn't.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Exactly what I meant. The main problem with Windows 8 is not the innovation (or lack of), but the legacy elements and the awkwardness resulting from it.

Sumaso 14y ago

Ah the pains of deploying an app store. I can't even count how many articles I've read about the apple app store rejecting someone's app for some reason or another. If you want a closed eco systems, these are the types of growing pains your going to have to go through.

spqr 14y ago

Windows 8 Doesn't Want Your Bugridden App There - I fixed the title for you.

unwind 14y ago

It took a click on the self-named application link in the beginning of the (very long) article, and some reading, before the name finally clicked. Memorylage is a portmanteau of "memory" and "collage", since the application shows a collage of your digital images. Or, hm, since "memory" is actually fully in there, perhaps that disqualifies it as a portmanteau ... then it might be a blend, instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend).

metabrew 14y ago

tl;dr - submitting stuff to app stores can be a nightmare, regardless of who runs the app store.

mtgx 14y ago
I've heard you can get your app and its updates published on the Play Store almost immediately, or within a day.
- CodeCube 14y ago
  Usually takes about an hour to be replicated out to the store when you upload an APK ... but no humans are involved in that process.

wrath 14y ago

Instead of these negative articles I'd like to see people write articles helping other have a better experience then they had. You're on the cutting edge of technology and the consequence is that you'll have problems. I've never personally submitted an app to an appstore but from what I've read Apple had similar problems when they first launched.

simonw 14y ago
There was lots of useful advice in this article about getting through the approval process.

mgkimsal 14y ago

What's so odd about all this is that lack of transparency why things fail was (is?) a huge issue in the Apple App Store process, and MS has had years to learn about what went wrong with the Apple process, and design around those issues. They seem to have baked those faults in to their own process. "We're backed up with submissions". WTF? They've been doing roadshows and having dev evangelists push the heck out of "develop apps for the app store!" messaging. That's fine. Staff up appropriately. For a company who understands this is a pivot, they need momentum, good press, etc., plus have had years watching Apple's mistakes in this area - there's just no excuse for not staffing (or ramping up quickly) on the app store processing.

coderdude 14y ago
>MS has had years to learn about what went wrong with the Apple process, and design around those issues. All that time spent learning about what and why Apple does what they do might have brought them to the conclusion that they ought to be doing the same thing. Or maybe they're "backed up" while they take it all in, figure out what's crap and what's not crap, create a good initial sorting of non-crap -> crap, and then open the flood gates a little more. You have to imagine that they've just suddenly become inundated by thousands (10s of thousands? More?) submissions and the majority of them will be awful crapware that needs to be sifted through. It takes a lot of time I'm sure -- I don't care how many people you put on staff.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  "All that time spent learning about what and why Apple does what they do might have brought them to the conclusion that they ought to be doing the same thing." I fear that conclusion. But, really... concluding that courting developers pissed off with an arbitrary opaque process by giving them the same arbitrary opaque process makes sense to ... who? "You have to imagine that they've just suddenly become inundated by thousands (10s of thousands? More?) submissions and the majority of them will be awful crapware that needs to be sifted through. " But... they've had more than a year to prepare for it, they need people to want to write for this platform (ios/android still have a the lion's mindshare), and MS is one of the few companies that could afford (financially) to make this experience better than it has. Stop the dividend payouts for a few quarters and use that money to beef up what they seem to be saying is the new direction of the company.

ja27 14y ago

I haven't submitted a Windows 8 app yet (soon) but I've had apps rejected by Apple and Nook. I have to say that Apple's rejections so far have been very clear on what needs to change. Nook has been 50-50. One rejection was clear, but another just gave me a useless numeric code. To defend Microsoft a little bit, at least you have developer evangelists available to help escalate things, even if that isn't working in this case.

jarjoura 14y ago
Apple also has evangelists who will help escalate/interpret things.

n9com 14y ago

Most of the rejections were due to problems with your app. We have found the Microsoft team and review process to be excellent - far better than anything we have experienced before. They go beyond the call of duty to help developers get their app onto the store and even give some great feedback on how the app could be even better. I guess it depends on who you deal with, but our personal experience in releasing our edutainment app called Magic Math ( http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/magic-math/ba5eb1c6-7592-45ca-80cc-60c1c53128a5 http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/magic-math/ba5eb1... ) was fantastic.

OmIsMyShield 14y ago
> Most of the rejections were due to problems with your app Agree, and the article seems to acknowledge this. Seems that the feedback wasn't detailed enough, though. I'd be interested to know if you found the feedback to be better, and theories about the causes of the disparity if that is the case?
- n9com 14y ago
  Our app was approved first time, but we had a few 'pre-reviews' where they gave us early feedback so that when it came to the actual review, it went through smoothly, took less than 5 days to get approved.
masklinn 14y ago
> Most of the rejections were due to problems with your app. Congratulation on completely and utterly missing TFA's point.

lini 14y ago

I can relate a bit about this article and the Windows Store submission process - I have been using it since the end of July. The requirements mentioned in the post (1.2, 3.2, 3.8, etc.) are part of a big document that tries to clearly outline what an app should and shouldn't do. They are defined rather well, but sometimes will leave you wandering what the hell is going on. I submitted an HTML app that was accepted, then after some minor changes failed validation the second time I submitted it. The problem was "Requirement 3.2: The app crashes", however, nothing I changed could cause a crash. I resubmitted the app with a bumped version and no other changes and it passed validation the second time. This led me to believe that MS are either still fixing bugs in the certification process or that my app ended up on a faulty test device that crashed. Still, I would LOVE IT if MS provided actual stack trace or other useful information if a crash occurs. The biggest problem with the Store right now is the time it takes to pass a new release. In the last couple of days the Microsoft built-in applications (video, finance, sports) have been updated multiple times, but my last submission took 5 days to pass the Content Compliance step. If Microsoft wants more apps in the Store, they need to scale up their review/certification infrastructure and team.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
At the very least, the debug console output as a text file would be helpful, no?
- lini 14y ago
  BTW they give you reports, but only if the crash was in an already approved app that is in the Store[1]. My point was that such information should be available during the certification process as well. [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/27/improving-apps-with-quality-reports.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/27/impr...
mgkimsal 14y ago
"Requirement 3.2: The app crashes" Really? They've listed a 'requirement' as 'app crashes'?

mariusmg 14y ago

There are 2 big problems with the Windows Store submission right now: - it takes a LOT of time to get a answer. From my experience it took 2 weeks (working days) until i got a answer back. - they don't list at first submission ALL of the reasons for which the app "fails". This leads to the following cycle : submit app, wait 2 weeks to get rejected for lame reasons, fix issue in couple hours, submit again, wait 2 weeks etc Hopefully things will improve in the near future but right now trying to get a app into Windows Store is a pretty long and annoying process.

mcherm 14y ago

Look, if Apple can't manage to do a curated app store in a way that "works" for developers, if Microsoft can't manage to do it... maybe a curated app store isn't a good idea. I mean, it's obviously a good idea for whoever curates the app store (they can leverage their power in all kinds of ways), but perhaps the problems for developers is not because these companies are doing it poorly, but just that injecting a review process by a third party between the developer and their customers is NATURALLY bad for developers.

CookWithMe 14y ago
Agreed. Release early and often is well known and accepted in software engineering... yet some stores do their best to make that impossible.
WayneDB 14y ago
I don't want to have to go through anybody to be able to get my app to my customers. This tendency towards closed-off app stores is really depressing.
- run4yourlives 14y ago
  As a phone user though, I WANT you to be vetted, because I don't want your "stock quote app" to suddenly brick my phone unless I send you $59.99 to get the "fix". I don't trust you. I trust apple. Deal with it.
  - WayneDB 14y ago
    You don't download software off the net unless it's vetted first by Apple? Have you never installed Chrome, Office or Photoshop? Maybe you haven't considered the alternative. It's something that Apple users don't really get much of, but there's a thing called choice. Why can't we have an app store AND allow side-loading? That'd be a nice choice. That way, the people who want to trade freedom for security can do so and the people who want freedom can have it. A third option would be to allow competing app stores (as well as side-loading). You're on the wrong side in the war on general purpose computing. If you want to see general purpose computing go away, by all means...keep trading your freedoms in.

paulbz 14y ago

I've submitted multiple apps to the Windows Store. They're not desperate and they don't want crap, which is why they have a high bar. The problem is the testing procedures aren't always consistent, so something may pass once and get rejected when you do your next update for a bug that existed in a previous version. But, that's the nature of testing - the same thing has happened for us on Apple's app store. Android appears to be the only store that lets you ship anything you want.

n9com 14y ago
They don't want crap? Have you seen some of the apps on the Windows Store?
- paulbz 14y ago
  touché
masklinn 14y ago
> The problem is the testing procedures aren't always consistent, so something may pass once and get rejected when you do your next update for a bug that existed in a previous version. That's not even relevant to TFA's point, which is that the review output is so terse and opaque it's not actionable and essentially resulted in him having to bug dozens of people and fine-comb multiple time through the application to find out what the issues were. There wasn't any complex issue, all of them were nigh-trivial (except the D3D one maybe) and TFAA gladly acknowledge this, the issue he outlines is that if the reports had actual information in them it'd have taken him a day to get everything fixed rather than 2 months.

CF_HoneyBadger 14y ago

As a developer (albeit not of Appstore Apps) I can understand the frustration of being told "It crashes" without being told why. However, there was a very interesting comment on the actual blog itself suggesting something along the line of "re-submit the app under a different name". I actually think that may not be that bad of an idea. If you have done as much verification as possible as to the stability and performance of your product, sometimes you have to do some sideways thinking to get it approved by the powers that be. I would like to see (just as an experiment) what would happen if the original developer would try this, and see what happens. The worst thing that could happen is that he could get told no (again).

BinRoo 14y ago

That's really strange. My friends and I from the University of Virginia published a couple apps (total 5 apps) and we each got through on our first round. My app is a simple Truth Table application that reduces boolean algebra http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-US/app/truth-table/9e87b727-55ab-4804-a5a8-17fd7a03e78d http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-US/app/truth-table/9e87b... Our apps didn't required internet connection, so that might explain the success-rate. So I guess if you want your app in he store as soon as possible, build version 1.0 without internet features.

love4code 14y ago

I have an app in the Windows Store. The author of the post is complaining, but he should read the manual before submitting his app. Excluding CurrentAppSimulator is documented in docs a thousand times. Stop whining, fix your crashing app and don't submit it until its working. Why would they want your crashing buggy app on the day of launch?

dscrd 14y ago

I really don't get why people continue to bang their heads against the wall that is Microsoft. We have plenty of better options, why them?

itsclearleon 14y ago

At this point it's not about the amount of apps they have in the store. It's about the quality of apps in the store. If they have 2 million apps an 1.9 million are horrible it will make Microsoft look cheap and generic. If they have 1000 apps that are awesome it will make them seem solid, legit and tactful. This guy should be able to clean out his own code base and make it up to par with the app stores expectation. They have pretty clear guidelines and he's not meeting them.

Zaheer 14y ago

I don't think the Apple AppStore is much better. I recently submitted an app and got back a very generic message saying what was wrong with my app. No help at all in trying to figure out what the problem really is.

TallGuyShort 14y ago

This is not an isolated case. I heard two reports from Microsoft employees this morning of their own apps being repeatedly rejected for weeks with little transparency.

bringking 14y ago

I have to admit I have had some problems with submitting to the Windows Phone 7 app store, however when the app failed certification the tester included step by step walkthroughs on how re-create the problem. I was generally able to recreate the problem. However, more than a few times I could not and just re-submitted, and it passed. :/

CodeCube 14y ago

I didn't have quite as bad an experience submitting my app (http://codecube.net/2012/09/introducing-viewer-for-khan-academy-windows-8/ http://codecube.net/2012/09/introducing-viewer-for-khan-acad...) to the w8 store. But it did fail the first time and I was quite annoyed at the reason. It failed for requirement 4.1.1: "If your app has the technical ability to transmit any user's personal information, you must maintain a privacy policy. You must provide access to your privacy policy in the Description page of your app, as well as in the app’s settings as displayed in the Windows Settings charm." Now, my app is open source, and doesn't collect any user information whatsoever. And not only that, but the app's meta data during submission has an optional field for a privacy policy URL. So I just ginned up a quick privacy policy that says we don't capture any personal info (http://codecube.net/khanacademy/privacy/ http://codecube.net/khanacademy/privacy/), added it to the settings charm, and resubmitted. It passed. But it was annoying.

madoublet 14y ago
Exact same problem I had. I am waiting for approval right now. If they are going to require a privacy policy, why not include it by default when you start a project? And, why do you have to go through another 7 day waiting period when you submit the app again. Shouldn't re-submissions be fast tracked?
- NeutronBoy 14y ago
  > If they are going to require a privacy policy, why not include it by default when you start a project? They might include a blank one, but I imagine they tried to aviod including a boiler-plate policy, otherwise you'd probably find 95% of app submissions would just use the template.
jpatte 14y ago
Exact same problem here too. We submitted a game which transmits no information whatsoever, so we didn't feel the need to provide a pivacy policy. Yet they made us submit again to fix just that. I think it's safe to assume that every app should provide a privacy policy by default, just in case.

panda_person 14y ago

I downloaded the RTM through Dreamspark, because Dreamspark students get a free Windows Store account (I have some asp.net and WP7 apps I wanted to port over to Win 8). Turns out, you still have to submit a credit card even if you have a Dreamspark account, which instantly turned me off.

shmerl 14y ago

> Try Again Later I'd say - dump MS. Try something that treats developers as humans.

jamesjguthrie 14y ago

I think now, I will wait maybe 6 months before building anything for the Windows Store.

riviera 14y ago

Tell me about this. I got 3 rejections, the last 2 about point 3.2 ("the app crashes"), after neither anyone in my team nor at our MS contact team was able to experience any problems. And the only feedback was a PDF showing a snapshot of the Windows desktop and some text that the JPEG compression had rendered unreadable. I thought it was a joke. Luckily a support person was nice enough to spend time reviewing the app and helped me discover the problem. Which was due to unclear and misleading expectations about the review process. Oh well...

Aaronontheweb 14y ago

If the OP reads HN, send me an email to aaron AT markedup DOT com I used to work on the evangelism team in the US for Microsoft (left in August to start my own company;) I can connect you with folks who can help you with the certification process.

masklinn 14y ago
The article notes that he already got plenty of connections throughout the process.

jheriko 14y ago

I agree that the store process is not great in providing feedback - however several of the problems mentioned could have been mitigated by good practice.