How to get to the App Store. Or the story of a random appruva

Hi Habr,

The site has a lot of articles about how to successfully pass the moderation of Apple Review T eam. This article is not about that. It is rather about how we accidentally received the device, not really wanting it.
What it led to and what happened - read on.


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The very idea of ​​writing applications for iOS and Android has been in my head for a long time, so long ago that I even became a fix idea. Having infected our friends with enthusiasm, we began to choose from a pile of options what should have been our first application.
The meaning of this sort of selection was simple - to tighten the skills in programming for a mobile platform to create mega applications in the future. Unfortunately, this development of events was not destined to come true.

We jumped, as they say, right off the bat. Being idealists by nature, we were very careful about the choice of ideas. Spending time on the next clone or no one needs a utility, definitely did not want to. The game industry was the ideal option, but God cheated the sensible designer on the team, and even creating a simple Indi game would be a matter of several years for us. Therefore, it was decided to make a game at the next beer party, but for people who do not want to kill time mindlessly, run a finger across the screen by launching another bird or cutting a banana into pieces.

What have we come up with, rightly ask you? And nothing really original-ingenious. You can even say that the idea was simple and familiar to a disgrace. We decided to do an online quiz, with smart questions, a dynamic chat and an old, kind bot-host. I think many of you remember the I R C quizzes that are played to this day.

The main secret of the application, in my opinion, is to believe in your idea and devote all of yourself and all your free time for the benefit of the future brainchild. Of all the components, we were deficient only in time. Having a tight schedule of main work, we together took a weekly day off and selflessly programmed in one of the libraries of the nearest university.

In about a month, we already had a chat and the first quiz engine ready. As we said before, we didn’t have a designer, so we had to do everything with our own hands. The Spartan view of the application did not scare, the main thing for us was the working code and playability.

First horror

Undoubtedly, it is worth mentioning and telling about the technical component. I am sure that many will be interested.
At that time, we knew Java well. Unfortunately, writing applications on i Phone in Java is a thankless task. In addition, we wanted our application to be multi-platform.
Therefore, we began to search for a suitable framework.

In the course of the discussion, a strategic decision was made and after a while - the right decision to write a game using HTML5 & ja v ascript.
Titanium became the working framework, and we taught the game to communicate with the system functions of each platform through callbacks,
for example, buying virtual things through the App Store, GooglePlay, Facebook (credits) mechanisms.

The client code was written in GWT . iPhone and Android communicate with the server via strings via web sockets. In conventional browsers, if there is no support for web sockets, then communication occurs via flash sockets.
A few words about the server. This is an increasingly popular java web server Netty bolted to Amazon. For the database, we used MongoDB.

Before and after. GWT in action.

Well, enough of the technical details, I can’t wait to tell you what happened next :)
So, having completed the first tolerable version of the application, where all the functions already worked (not without bugs and small jambs, of course). We decided to upload the application to the moderator mode in order to find out if we are moving in the right direction. It was also interesting to understand at an early stage, for what reason the application will be rejected. As it turned out, this was partly a mistake, because after 6 days, the status of the application was changed first to “ I n Review”, then to “Processing for App Store”. The final chord was a letter with the subject “Your app status is“ Ready for Sale ”.
Convulsively picking up the iPhone and running the search for the App store, I ... found our application.
It is now I understand that it was necessary to err and put the date of publication “Release after approve” But in hindsight we are smarter, right?

I tried to understand what to do next.
The choice fell on the easiest option - do nothing. We decided to finish the already existing game, adding everything that we wanted to see in the final version and come what may.

And it was like this:
After 2 days, without any advertising, our application downloaded about 200 people and began to play together. This turn of events us, of course, stunned. On the one hand, the application became available with all the flaws and bugs, and this is a shame. On the other hand, this gave us confidence by affirming the realization that we are moving in the right direction.
I would like to express my gratitude, as well as apologize to all those who are not on their own became our beta tester. You all helped us a lot!

Enthusiasm, in turn, gave us a bunch of new forces and emotions, we began to devote much more time to our brainchild, where everyone made their own piece of the puzzle and integrated it into a common mechanism. Supplementing a new functional, fixing existing bugs. Sifted and added thousands of new questions. In short, each had their own part, which he regularly performed.

A few months later we were running in a new, completely different version of the game, which could already be sent for moderation. Updates were truly global. We changed the game model, diluting the gameplay with new features and capabilities.
Introduced game currency, thereby monetizing all new chips. Added authorization via facebook, screwed twitter.

Having thoroughly tested, we uploaded a new version of the game and waited for a positive response. About this, we are not particularly worried, perfectly remembering the first attempt. About a week later, a new application was rejected. Murphy intervened. Rather, his law. Just on the night of checking, the server hung and the game did not start. What the moderator phlegmatic wrote in the official response.

Recalling mother’s mother’s carrier of parabolic limbs in the face of the server side coder, we filled in the application again and began to wait humbly.
A week later we received a new waiver. And here it became already not in itself.

Moderator did not like the look of the interface. I mean, he does not meet Apple standards on the well-known guide. In part, I understood that it was a matter of taste. One moderator found the design of the application sufficient. Another found him not meeting the standards. In theory, it was possible to try the happiness of a new attempt, hoping to get not to the “esthete”, but I decided to send a small letter to the appendage.

In the letter I talked about a small but cohesive community of the game and how everyone is waiting for the update, which will be solved by the accumulated bugs.
In part, this was true, but of course, I still exaggerated. In addition, I told that after the first installation, nothing significant in the design has changed and I see no reason for the refusal of an already approved design.

Stretched another week long wait. We received another failure. This time they motivated him by the impossibility of placing the application on the App Store, which is essentially a “web app”.

To say that I was enraged is not to say anything. The answer was rather similar to the correct message in the age-old Russian direction. After consulting we dashed off another letter with a detailed explanation of the technologies and mechanisms used. And such an eloquent letter made sense, we again got on the first moderator, but the update was finally approved.

What it looks like now

Himself a forced break even went to our advantage. During this time, versions for Android and Facebook were finally completed. And if there is a proper interest, I can tell you what surprises and pitfalls we met there.

On this epic with a random approach of our first application can be considered complete. True end, this is the beginning of something new. But as the classic used to say, this is a completely different story :)

PS Who cares the name of the application, I think he can easily find it in the text;)