Being rejected by Apple’s iTunes store is not unusual. If you don’t follow every rule perfectly, even if your app is free (as WishToList is), there’s still a chance.

Our app was rejected for a “silly” reason – using the same name for one of our “resources” which happened to be the name of a “private” Apple resoure. It took a few hours to track down the violation (Apple doesn’t give you much information when they reject your app), and we resubmitted the app later that day.

It took Apple about 10 days to review it (they actually don’t really run it, they automatically verify that it doesn’t break any rules), and they accepted WishToList.

You can download the app directly from the iTunes App Store here:

WishToList App for iPhone, iPad, iPod

You can visit our website here:

www.WishToList.com

The next round of testing went fairly well. Most of the obvious bugs were gone, and we focused on the asthetics of the app. We changed all of the screen background images so that the words were still readable on the screen even if the background was “noisy”, and we added a set of screen background images just for the iPad.

The students started playing with the app at home, and would send me bug reports and a corresponding diagnostic log. They probably found another twenty defects over that weekend, and by early the following week, the app was more or less done. They found a few problems with the website where parents look at the child’s wishlist, and we resolved them as well.

To submit an app into the App Store, you need both an icon (which we had), and sample screen shots. The students voted on which screens to use for the screen shots, and I had the graphic designer make those look presentable:

We were ready to submit to the App Store!