iPad App Submission - Don't Use Apple's App Loader

My iPad app is approved and going live on July 1st!

Music Gremlins is an ear-training game where you beat gremlins by matching the notes that they play. Different types of gremlins demand different strategies. As a musician, I found it very difficult to practice relative pitch and this makes it easier and more fun.

I wanted to have Music Gremlins be more game-like, but it turned out kind of like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing for ear training. Oh well, I hope that at least musicians still find it useful. And it’s only my first attempt.

Details: it’s also only for iPad at the moment but it is totally free.

The App Store Process

Last weekend, Music Gremlins was almost ready to go so I put in a focused effort to finish it up. I spent all weekend doing a thousand little “last things” and submitted it for review on Sunday.

It took me hours to actually submit the damn thing. If you ever come across Apple’s “Download Application Loader”, run away. The Application Loader is a pit of hell from which there is no escape. You can upload your app directly through XCode, which involves a mere hour or so of swearing.

Once XCode has uploaded your app for you, you get an automated email that your app is “Waiting for Review.” The review process for my app was painless, but Music Gremlins didn’t exactly stretch the bounds of iOS. I uploaded it on Sunday, June 9th and they got back to me today (June 17th), which was a lot faster than I expected. I got several emails today, that my app was “In review,” “Processing,” and finally:

Screenshot from the final game:

Unfortunately, I forgot to remove the debugging framerate, so you can see the frame rate in the lower left corner. This is a screen shot from the simulator and is running at 20fps, but on my iPad it runs at 60fps (yay!). I’m going to try to remove that by July 1st…