Unsolicited Opinion

Waiting for Review

· app-store, app-review, due, indie

I started making apps professionally 16 years ago. Due was my first app. It was a project I gave myself for learning Objective-C, which was the language we had to use to develop for the iPhone back then.

My entire app development career since then has been on Apple’s platforms, so I know quite a bit about how things have changed over the years.

When I first started, an app review could take about a week, and that was considered normal. In recent years though, reviews have been quick. I could usually submit an update, go to bed, and wake up to find it approved. I’d read about other developers’ long delays and rejections, but I had never been on the wrong end of them, so I never felt much resentment towards App Review.

That changed this week when I submitted Due 26.6. The update adds support for the iPhone Duo. As I write this, five days after I submitted it and two days after the iPhone Duo went on sale, it is still “Waiting for Review”.

I’ve gone through disappointment, then resentment, and now fear and uncertainty. It has made me completely rethink building my business entirely on Apple’s platforms and the App Store.

Due in App Store Connect: iOS 26.6 Waiting for Review

Racing to launch day

Apple announced the iPhone Duo on September 9, but only released the Xcode 27.1 SDK we needed to build for it on September 18. That left about 35 days to get our apps ready if we wanted them to work well on the Duo from day one.

The Duo is arguably the most exciting iPhone in years, and I wanted Due to be ready for any of my customers who might be getting one. So I started working on support for Duo even though I was already in the thick of preparing for one of the biggest updates Due has had in years.

That meant many days working past midnight to make this happen. On October 20, I finally finished Due 26.6, got all the screenshots ready, and submitted it at 9:58 PM. That was three days before launch. I expected to wake up to an approval, like almost every update before it.

Little did I know it was the start of an emotional rollercoaster.

The emotional rollercoaster

When the first day passed with no news, I was a little worried, but still confident it would be reviewed by the second day.

When the second day came and went, I was disappointed that Due probably wouldn’t make it in time for the Duo’s launch. Still, I harboured hope that App Review would get to it overnight, so I set the update to release automatically as soon as it was approved. That way, Due could still make it in time for the launch, I thought.

In the days following the submission, I logged in to App Store Connect multiple times a day to make sure nothing was holding things up on my end. The first thing I did every morning was to check my email for an approval. I checked whenever I woke up at night too. And I’ve been waking up a lot these nights. One night, I even dreamt that the email had finally arrived and Due 26.6 was in my customers’ hands.

But the email never came.

When I woke up on October 23 to still no email, my disappointment turned into resentment. A month of work to have Due ready for the Duo’s launch had come to naught, I thought.

When I saw John Gruber’s review of the iPhone Duo, with a screenshot of Due on his home screen, I knew he was using the App Store version, which wasn’t optimised for the Duo. It made me angry that I couldn’t ship work that was already done, and put the best version of Due in my users’ hands.

Weeks earlier, Craig Federighi told Donald Decodes that, unlike on Android, apps would quickly be tailored for the Duo: “I think our developer community is going to rise to that occasion very quickly.”

We did. App Review didn’t.

I tried everything App Store Connect had to offer:

None of them got a reply from a person.

In fact, I never even thought that Due would still be stuck in “Waiting for Review” days after an expedited review request.

The last time I had to ask for one was years ago. Back then, I had to justify why the update was urgent, and someone would reply to say that they had “made a one-time exception”, and the app would be reviewed soon after.

This time, all I got was a confirmation note on the page saying my request had been received. It read as if the request had been approved automatically. But no email came, and nothing has happened since.

I’m not alone (and that makes things even scarier)

Yesterday, out of helplessness, I started searching to see if anyone else was having the same problem. That led me to a megathread on Apple’s Developer Forums, started by one developer to keep track of everyone affected. More than 30 developers have posted in it so far.

I was horrified to find the App Review section of the forums filled with developers whose apps are stuck in “Waiting for Review”, all trying to get someone at Apple to respond.

The submission dates people posted in the megathread go back to mid-September, and many have been waiting two weeks or more. Their support requests and expedited review requests have gone unanswered too. While some of them had a rejection before they got stuck, many didn’t seem to.

As far as I can see, nobody from Apple has responded to them.

On Apple’s App Review page, it still says: “App Review works around the clock, typically reviewing at least 50% of submissions in less than 24 hours and 90% in less than 48 hours.”

Of course, I don’t know the exact circumstances behind each case. But reading through the threads, I realised that I’ve actually been very lucky all these years.

I’ve only been waiting five days, but it’s been enough to make me scared.

I’ve never felt so helpless before. I have no idea how much longer it will take, or whether anything I do will make any difference.

One developer, etapx, wrote:

What bothers me most isn’t the delay. Delays happen. Maybe there’s a backlog, a staffing issue, a policy change, or a technical problem on their end. Most of us would understand that. The problem is the silence. There’s no banner in App Store Connect, no developer news post, no email, no updated wait time, and no answers to support tickets. For a company this size, with a platform millions of developers depend on, that’s hard to understand.

Apple used to tell developers: “If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.” So whom can we turn to for an actual response?

A rude awakening

The same day, while checking App Store Connect for what felt like the hundredth time, I saw a banner asking me to take a survey.

App Store Connect banners: “Preparing for iPhone Duo” and “Help Improve the App Store”

“Help Improve the App Store,” it said.

I wasn’t really in the mood for a survey, but I thought I’d do it anyway.

Among the statements I was asked to agree or disagree with were:

You may have guessed my responses.

But more tellingly, there were pages and pages of questions about alternative distribution. The survey wanted to know what other operating systems and platforms we develop apps for, which channels we use to distribute them, and how familiar we are with the alternatives.

It certainly looks like Apple is worried about developers turning to alternative distribution.

Due has only ever been on Apple’s platforms. Over the past 16 years, many customers have asked me for an Android version, both by email and in their App Store reviews.

“The kind of app which keeps me on iOS, no joke,” wrote one.

“Due is the only reason I still bother with an iPhone,” said another.

A third went further: “This app is the only thing holding me back from switching back to Android.” They gave Due one star, and promised to change it to five if an Android version ever comes out.

It’s not that I don’t want to make Due for Android users. I’m not anti-Android. I’ve just always used an iPhone, and I don’t own an Android phone. I make Due because it’s something I use myself every day, and Due for Android isn’t something I’d use.

But perhaps more importantly, I already struggle to keep up with Due on Apple’s platforms alone. Building it from the ground up for another platform just isn’t something I can realistically do on my own.

I never seriously considered alternative distribution either. I was relatively happy with the App Store. Sure, it had its annoyances, but it took care of payments, distribution, and the different tax rules in every country Due is sold in. For the most part, it stayed out of my way. And I’d much rather spend my time improving the app than dealing with all that.

The irony is that while Apple’s survey suggests it is worried about losing developers to alternative marketplaces, Apple itself is the one pushing us away.

This episode has shown me that by distributing exclusively on the App Store, I have ceded control of my own work to another company.

For the first time in 16 years, I’m afraid for Due’s future on the App Store. And what scares me most isn’t this update. It’s the next one.

Say Due 26.6 is finally approved, and it ships with a critical bug. In the past, I could request an expedited review and be fairly sure someone would look at it within 12 hours or so.

Now? I have zero confidence in the process.

Winning back the developers

What frustrates me is that everything else about making apps has sped up, but App Review has inexplicably slowed down.

As a one-man team, it used to be hard to juggle everything: shipping new features, answering support emails, fixing bugs, updating documentation, and marketing. Now with AI, I can actually keep up with some of it.

Apple clearly wants this too. It has been building AI into Xcode itself. In that same interview, Craig Federighi pointed to these AI tools as one reason developers would adopt the Duo so quickly.

But App Review hasn’t kept up with the times. In fact, when it comes to communication, it has regressed to a level that I have never experienced before.

To put things into perspective: we had about 35 days to get our apps ready for the Duo. A week spent “Waiting for Review” is 20% of that. And at this point, I’m not even confident that Due will be approved within a week.

App Review needs a major overhaul. It needs to be faster, but more than that, it needs to tell us what’s going on. Not just for people like me, but for new developers submitting their very first app too.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do about it. But I now know how dangerous it is to depend entirely on one company, especially one that won’t even tell you why you’re waiting, and how much longer you’ll have to wait.

Apple wants the App Store to be “our preferred app marketplace”. To get there, it needs to make the App Store a place we want to be.

Right now, it’s doing the opposite.