iPhone Savior: Developer Battles Apple Over Shiny Chat Bubbles

The latest fantastical App Store rejection saga comes by way of Chess Wars ($.99), a purposeful app that allows users to challenge Facebook friends in chess games via Facebook Connect on their iPhones. The grand fiasco began when developer Joe Stump, submitted update 1.2 for App Store approval only to be put in check by Apple with six weeks of awkward silence. The critical update was aimed at correcting certain "show stopping bugs" for new users of Chess Wars.

According to Stump, Apple rejected his latest update because of the shiny in-game chat bubbles. For some strange reason that ludicrous rejection excuse took the company six weeks to communicate. Stump is certain that the wait would have been even longer had he not unleashed a scathing blog post blasting Apple over his Chess Wars approval nightmare.

"They said they were rejecting the application because our in-game chat looked too much like Apple’s SMS application." Stump wrote on his blog.

Further communication from an Apple representative indicated (according to Stump) that the chat bubbles used in their iPhone SMS software are trademarked, encouraging Stump to make his chat bubbles "less shiny" in order to be in compliance.

"Just got off the phone with Apple while I was writing this blog post and they told me, no joke, that the chat bubbles are, in fact, trademarked. Furthermore, they suggested I could, among other suggestions make them “less shiny.” Stump writes.

Joe Stump (pictured right) is convinced that it took his "widely publicized profanity laced blog post" entitled "Pass the lubricant as we’re getting fucked by Apple too", in order to gain Apple's attention. Which means that Joe should be seeing a personal Phil Schiller penned apology email very soon now that this latest App Store debacle has reached several wildly popular Mac-centric blogs.

Delaying a routine app update for six weeks over the design aesthetic of some tiny Chat bubbles is truly absurd. Which instantly smacks of the flawed approval processes and poor communication that's plagued Apple since the App Store first launched in July of 2008. Creating continued frustration for those unfortunate iPhone developers ending up trapped in the company's much maligned approval purgatory.

What's equally absurd is the idea that "show stopping bugs" still remain in Chess Wars even after update 1.1 was released, which supposedly addressed all of the critical issues. Stump defended his coding woes by revealing the grueling beta testing steps he takes to make Chess Wars not so buggy.

"We have about 50 beta testers and over 200 unit tests for this specific application so it’s not like we’re not testing. The two bugs were show stoppers for cases we didn’t think to test, but nonetheless affect most of our new users." Stump wrote in his blog post.

Even with 50 beta testing ninjas the end result for Joe Stump still amounts to "Fail" in any language. The good news is that Chess Wars will eventually emerge from App Store purgatory brilliantly bug free. Just in time for some lonely chess club nerd to build a shiny new, less buggy version of Facebook chess for the iPhone masses. Along with creating perfectly dull looking, square shaped chat bubbles that require no need for lubricants to be involved. I'd buy that for one a dollar!!

[Joestump.net] [Photo by JoeStump]