Apple Review

Apple has recevied a lot of criticism lately for the way they approve (or reject) iPhone applications. Some of it has been fair (long wait times) and some of it has not (i am with Apple on google voice rejection).

WhatsApp 2.0 was recently approved by Apple and i just wanted to let everybody know that albeit a standard two week wait, our story with Apple review team is quite different. It is actually good, unlike a lot of negative approval stories floating on the Internets

While waiting for approval, we got a call from Apple asking us (very politely) to remove all references to BlackBerry App Store in our application description. That made total sense to us and we removed them right away. A few days later we were in contact with Apple and they asked us to remove certain keywords from iTunes Connect and again. They explained why and their request was absolutely reasonable. And a few days later after that we were in contact with Apple again because they wanted us to change our chat UI. Our apple contact was very polite and explained exactly what we should change and why. He also said that we can optionally decide not to change the UI, but it would just take another week or two to get the application approved. Since we wanted to push the release out ASAP, we changed the UI, re-submitted and got approved the next day.

Throughout this interaction with Apple, they have shown to be extremely helpful and absolutely reasonable in their requests. Thank you guys!