App reviews at Apple: understaffed, filtering tons of garbage apps

Apple’s mobile ecosystem is probably best known for being tightly controlled by Apple itself so no junk gets in it, and so far it has worked mostly good. But mostly isn’t good enough and many developers have complained about long review times and their apps getting released with often murky reasons.

But what about the people who have to deny those apps, have you ever thought how their work routine goes? Former senior engineer at Apple Mike Lee reveals some interesting detail about the app review guys and it turns out their job is not all that easy as it might look on the surface.

Lee who worked at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Relations team and is definitely one of the people in the know, says that the department is understaffed like many at Apple and has to go through to tons and tons of junk apps for a huge part of the day. Actually, you might have never thought that with a $100 developer fee that Apple charges for entry, app reviewers would get so many apps filled with pictures of male and female genitalia.

And filtering through all this garbage, it’s no wonder that sometimes a quality app can get denied as well. But with that explanation, now it’s clear why Apple is imposing its strict reviews on apps before they get into the store. To achieve this freedom from porn that we’ve heard Jobs proclaim, Appel tries to accelerate the process.

"The only way to deal with it is to set the bar so far away from d*cks so that even a picture of a cucumber gets blocked by accident," Lee explains. "Because if you don't, you have people spending hours and hours of conversation on whether something is a pubic hair. It's a huge waste of time."



source: Business Insider