A New Way That Bugs Can Bite You
Catching up on my reading and came across an interesting article on the App 
Store from Jason Kincaid over at TechCrunch. Ostensibly, this piece is about Apple’s overly strict and seemingly random App Store approval process and a high-pressure NSFW rant from a high-profile developer, Joe Stump, whose popular app has a new version that is on the outside of the app store, looking in.
Stump outlines a problem that he had with Chess Wars, the Facebook Connect-enabled chess game that came out in July. After catching a show-stopping bug soon after the initial release, his company Blunder Move promptly issued an update. Soon thereafter they noticed another bug, which they quickly released a fix for. Unfortunately, this second update has sat in App Store purgatory for many weeks now, and Apple has gone silent on when it will be approved.
What struck me — other than the string of bad press that Apple has earned via the lousy treatment of its developers — is that THIS is a new cost of bugs.
Not to lay blame at Stemp’s feet. We, of all people, know that bugs happen. Plus he mentions utilizing 50 beta testers and 200 unit tests, so they’re doing more testing than many. But IF these showstopper bugs had been caught in the initial version or even in the 2nd version of Chess Wars, then Chess Wars wouldn’t have its nose pressed up against the window of the App Store, waiting for the powers-that-be to bless the new version.
Chalk it up as another real-world reason to achieve maximum professional testing coverage to eradicate all quality, security and privacy defects before your app goes live. Have other stories of software bugs causing havoc in interesting, scary or funny ways? Drop us a comment and tell us about it.
I can understand a longer delay for the approval of an initial version of an app but there needs to be a speed lane for approving subsequent updates.
Couldn’t agree more, James. But with the rigid approval processes for all new apps and versions in the App Store, it’s one more reason that bugs discovered after launch are problematic — and have a very real cost.
I really feel for the Chess Wars guys… they’re trying to do the right thing by their users, but being prevented by forces that are outside their control. Developer beware!