We received notice this morning that the YNAB for iPhone Lite app was rejected because the reviewers needed to be given a test Dropbox account. We set that all up for them and re-submitted immediately.
Since the update to the current iPhone app is still “Waiting for Review,” we update the Reviewer Instructions there as well, hopefully avoiding another round trip with the reviewers.
We’re now back and “Waiting for Review” with both apps. We’re going to request an expedited review again in a few moments. We’re told the clock doesn’t reset if you just update your application’s metadata (which is all we’ve had to do so far), but there was still a nine-day delay between re-submitting the Lite app and having it go to review again. So who knows how long this wait will take.
Here’s hoping there’s only good news going forward.
Wow, what did you do to p** off Apple? ;) There have got to be 1000 different apps in the app store that use dropbox, they need every developer to set up a test account for them? what? Unbelievable!
Thanks for the update! Love a company that tells you what you need to know…before you need to know it!
Yeah no kidding!!! Apple products are great, the processes and the nonsense otherwise is utterly ridiculous!!!
Apple. Think Indifferent.
Hate to say this, but these blog posts exposing the sausage-making that is the app store review process is probably what they did to piss off apple.
Hey Jason, hopefully that’s not the case. :)
It’s a little harsh to blast Apple for this to be honest. I’m certainly NOT an Apple fan boy, but I have worked in the high end console computer games industry for 12 years, and I can vouch for Apple needing a little time for testing. The big console manufacturers require MUCH longer than a couple of weeks to go through their QA and approval processes, some taking several months giving us tens of bug reports per day to deal with. With however many hundreds of new apps being submitted to Apple each day, and each app requiring significant testing, a couple of weeks queuing shouldn’t be that surprising. These guys don’t just get your app and fiddle with it for a couple of hours before going ‘yep, ship it’ – they seek to understand your design and test EVERY single possible eventuality that they can think of. You shouldn’t see them as a blockage to you getting your hands on it, they are contributing to its development significantly by ensuring it is robust and well tested, and often they have the facilities and man power to test it far better than the company that wrote it in the first place. This was just submitted at a time when they had a lot in their queue. Give them a chance to do their bit.
If Apple would give us 10 bugs to deal with at once, that would be great. As it is, they stop at the first thing they encounter (whether it causes the app to stop or not), and then you have to fix it and resubmit to find the next thing.
It’s kinda frustrating to watch happen.
“You shouldn’t see them as a blockage to you getting your hands on it, they are contributing to its development significantly by ensuring it is robust and well tested…”
And, yet, there the Android app is, released and helping people.
If Apple were interested in robust and well-tested apps, they wouldn’t make it impossible for a company to have a wide beta test. By arbitrarily restricting beta tests Apple is hurting, not helping, its customers.
When you set them up a dropbox account, can you use this link???
***Link hidden, it’s just a joke.***
But seriously this is ridiculous on Apple’s part. I understand keeping your store clean of bad apps, but you have run a balance between percentage rejected and time to pass the test…
It’s frustrating, but these sorts of things happen. Without a document outlining everything that you could possibly need to provide, there’s always a chance that something could be missed. In this case, the test Dropbox account.
Here’s hoping that the turn around time is a quick one and we can all start taking advantage of the newly designed features.
This really is totally unbelievable. It’s beginning to sound like Apple is playing games.
ehm…expedited reviews are usually for something like you have updated your app, get loads of crash reports and need to fix a bug ASAP, so people can use it again. I’ve never heard that someone got an expedited review for getting a new app through or just a normal update
Based on our track record requesting expedited reviews, I believe you’re probably right. Though we could frame it in such a way that the current iPhone version is pretty much broken (or at least severely hindered) when attempting to use YNAB 4 with it.
I admire your patience with Apple, Jesse! My desk would have a head-shaped dent in it by now! ;)
All good things come to those who wait. It will all work out!
Hey Jesse!
Love YNAB! Apple finally sunk themselves with me by messing with YNAB. I switched to android this past weekend and love it. YNAB4 rocks as does the mobile version. Keep up the great work!
Yep, and my telephone provider recently annoyed me, so I moved to the Andes last week and I love it.
Andreas, let me fix the comparison, how about my telephone provider really annoyed me by leaving me without a phone line for two weeks because I got a new phone and they need to approve it, so I changed to another telephone provider. Or I hated living in a horrible polluted slow city, so moved to wide open spaces of the Andes.
This is the Apple policy and users/developers know it, and they also know there are alternatives available. If enough people are annoyed to vote with their feet away from Apple it might get changed. It might also be too late for Apple then.
Sorry about the setback Jesse. You would think that they had access to Dropbox already!
I’m patiently waiting for the app to be approved. We’ll upgrade to YNAB 4 when that happens.
Hi, here is a YNAB fan from Sweden. I didn’t know the review process for iPhone apps could be this frustrating. Anyway, my impression is that you have done everything possible to speed things up. I still think you guys have come up with a great product (and method! :)).
I don’t understand why they can’t develop more developer friendly policies when it comes to changes such as the ones they are requesting of you. I have purchased plenty of apps with huge flaws that after several versions still do not work correctly. They should have never made it into the app store. YNAB deserves a place ASAP!
Thanks to the YNAB team for the updates and working so hard to get this rolled out to users.
How did Dropbox ever get in the App Store? Lol
Hang on in there.
And this is why Apple fails. I have an Android and your app works beautifully. My wife has the iPhone, and now she can’t wait to drop Apple.
Good things come to those who wait! YNAB has been a tremendous asset to my family, and we’ve been looking forward to the cloud sync feature for what seems like a very long time. I’m happy to wait for the iPhone app (full version), knowing it will be worth the wait. We’ll just keep using YNAB 3 until then.
Are apple messing you about?
First they ask for a video of sync in action. Now it’s Dropbox so they can see for themselves. Surely they knew a video wouldn’t be enough in the first place?!?!
This is driving me insane!!!
Agree. My patience with Apple is wearing thin. Love all my Apple products, but this really makes me want to purchase an Android phone.
Rediculous!
Surely it’s a valid end-user test to ensure it works with an existing Dropbox account, that the app doesn’t somehow require you to have created one from scratch just for its own purposes?
Deep breaths.
Don’t the customer reviews serve that purpose? If developers say a drop box account works and it really doesn’t, it’s their funeral. Apple should let the developer’s software fail in the app store if it doesn’t work properly. Good grief Apple!
I bet if you guys used iCloud for syncing, you wouldn’t have to provide an account for them to test with…
If I was Apple, I would definitely make it more difficult to use another provider’s cloud services vs. my own iCloud. To, you know, gently nudge developers to use the “better” product.
As soon as I heard YNAB was using Dropbox I knew this would be a hurdle. IMO it isn’t the most ideal solution for sync as now you are completely dependent on a third party and Apple want to protect their consumers.
They had to use third party else you would not be able to sync with Windows or anrorid users.
…Apple want to take as much of their consumers money as possible.
There, I fixed your comment for you.
You do realize that, as between YNAB and its customers, Apple is a third party, right?
For what it’s worth, this extended wait makes me much more frustrated with Apple than YNAB. My upgrade $$$ are budgeted and waiting!
I wish you a swift process on this. My YNAB 4 is downloaded. Now I just need the new iPhone app to be approved before installing and activating it. Looking forward to seeing your improvements :)
Guys, dont be frustrated. This is just fine and how the apple approval works. They get thousands of app applications and they have to make sure that the app is secure to use for the user. And if you use third party services like dropox, it just takes more time to test that. And especially dropbox is not too secure anyway, the app is using an encrypted connection to dropbox, but on dropbox it arrives cleartext and will be encrypted by dropbox again, which means dropbox always will have access to every single transaction you enter into YNAB. Beside this fact, apple really has to make sure, that everything is working properly.
So dont be so frustrated, it doesnt help and as dropbox is not your life machine, keep cool :)
They knew it required Dropbox but are dripping out their testing requirements one at a time. That isn’t just fine.
You don’t know what they knew. They might not have known how it was used and realized at a later point that it requires a deeper look into that. And if I would be Apple, I would let the developer provide me with a test account as well. But sure, they could have mentioned that in their developer requirements, that test account should be provided at first place.
Easy man, this is a first world problem we are talking here about. Enjoy the summer! :)
“You don’t know what they knew.”
They asked for a video of how the Dropbox syncing worked. I’m pretty sure they knew it used Dropbox.
Exactly, after they received the video, they realized it works with dropbox in a way that requires a deeper look into it and they required a Dropbox account.
Do you think they make up reasons to delay the app? Why would they create them self more work while they already have plenty of it?
Always assume the best in others, makes life much, much easier :)
And if you are interested in how the app approval works and how difficult it is for apple, read here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-it-really-sucks-to-be-an-app-reviewer-for-apple-2012-7?op=1
Good stuff. Thanks for the link Joh.
OH MY GOSH Joh. That article was funny as heck and a little sad at the same time.. makes me feel a little less frustrated with the Apple App Peeps. I really hope that is a gross exaggeration…if it isn’t then I just feel sorry for them.
I totally thought about that link when I was working up a comment in my mind.
Apple has decided that YNAB is a good idea so they are giving you the runaround while they slap something similar together, patent it, and then sue you for everything you own (and them some) for “stealing” their idea.
Wow…no fan-boy here! ;)
Yeah, this really makes me want to get an android phone for my next upgrade. It’s really crappy that Apple’s doing this. I’ve got at least 2 lastpass updates while ynab is not even being reviewed. If I was YNAB I would be on the phone and I wouldn’t hang up until I got a response to why it is taking so long. This is costing YNAB money. To all the people saying apple is review the apps for quality, you need to think again. Apple is holding up the app to see if there is anyway they can suck some more money out of it. All apple cares about is getting their cut and making their cut as big as possible.
I love how people are making excuses for Apple. Here we have a classic case of people thinking they own a piece of hardware, and a software shop and its consumers ready and willing to make an arms length transaction to run some compatible software on that hardware. Why in the world Apple feels the need to get in the way here is beyond me, but it’s completely inexcusable and do much more to alienate their customers than to “protect” them.
Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. I don’t know of any other app that has as sophisticated syncing algorithms or methods for resolving conflicts using Dropbox as YNAB. Maybe they’re not believing that it works as well as it does in the demo video because no one has ever demonstrated anything this advanced before. This idea doesn’t make me happy that Apple is repeatedly postponing YNAB for iPhone’s release, but I think it shows that Jesse and the YNAB team have something special on their hands.
mSecure does exactly this using Dropbox between iOS, Windows and Mac clients. I seriously question the need for a dropbox account to test YNAB. Doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Don’t know if you’re aware but there have been massive problems with corrupt app store binaries in the last few days. So you may be dodging a bit of a bullet by having this delay.
There’s some silver lining for us!
Power out since Monday, not expected until Saturday. We would have liked the phone app, but same goes with the electricity. Both are worth wait for.
Thanks YNAB, and the team for your hard work.
I’m sure it will be worth the wait. I am just printing my budget and sticking it in my pocket when I go shopping. Not as good as having on the iphone, but better than going over my budget.
Taylor and I have long wanted to develop a foldable budget..you know, go back to pencil and paper. If not for the the mere challenge it would involve. Strangely enough, we still haven’t gotten around to it :)
Many task managers are able to print a foldable todo list. Toodledo supports it. See http://www.pocketmod.com/ also.
I think it would be great to provide a budget report that can be printed and folded in this way. I know that this is different than what you are thinking, but this would be much simpler to do and a nice complement to your method.
Hope it gives you some ideas.
Actually it’s pretty close to what we’ve discussed in the past ;)
I have a couple of pocketmods on the desk in front of me.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!
Given the Trojan debacle at the AppStore, I wonder just what really goes on during the approval process. They should’ve caught this ( http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/07/05/malicious-app-store-app/ ) and yet is keeping our beloved YNAB app in limbo. :/
I’m totally an Apple fangirl, but I really struggle with the AppStore.
Not again Crapple… I also think thats only tactic of them to force to iClound. But it wouldn’t be possible to use it in this way – so this isn’t an option (luckly). I love my iPhone, but this are again enough reasons to switch to Android – just for the priciple.
They’ve got you. Apple knows it and uses it. Great customer service Right!! This all started because you were doing the right thing and offering people’s money back if they don’t like the product, WOW. Are they afraid that they will have to refund there two cents worth. Unbelievable, Sorry Jesse and all the good folks that have worked hard to make a great product! Sounds like the Apple of old is gone and the new is here.
It’s a little harsh to blast Apple for this to be honest. I’m certainly NOT an Apple fan boy, but I have worked in the high end console computer games industry for 12 years, and I can vouch for Apple needing a little time for testing. The big console manufacturers require MUCH longer than a couple of weeks to go through their QA and approval processes, some taking several months giving us tens of bug reports per day to deal with. With however many hundreds of new apps being submitted to Apple each day, and each app requiring significant testing, a couple of weeks queuing shouldn’t be that surprising. These guys don’t just get your app and fiddle with it for a couple of hours before going ‘yep, ship it’ – they seek to understand your design and test EVERY single possible eventuality that they can think of. You shouldn’t see them as a blockage to you getting your hands on it, they are contributing to its development significantly by ensuring it is robust and well tested, and often they have the facilities and man power to test it far better than the company that wrote it in the first place. This was just submitted at a time when they had a lot in their queue. Give them a chance to do their bit.
The frustration does not stem from the fact that it takes a couple of weeks to get to reviewing it. It stems from the fact that it has nearly been a month since the apps were first submitted, and the rejections are for trivial matters and a broken workflow
Apple: metadata update – stop all review
YNAB: updated metadata, resubmit
…9 days…
Apple: no demo video for how dropbox works – stop all review
YNAB: upload video, resubmit
…9 days…
Apple: oh it uses dropbox? we need a dropbox account setup – stop all review
YNAB: here’s your dropbox account
…??? days…
At step 1 the reviewer could have easily said “We need you to update the metadata, a video demonstrating how it works with dropbox, and a dropbox account.” I am making a reasonable guess that all of the data to identify those three needs are in the description, which is the metadata it was rejected for in the first place.
I also think you way overestimate the amount of work they do with the apps to approve them. There are way too many apps out there that get through the review process with constant crashes, things that are later found to blatantly violate apple policies, etc.
Lastly, your experience in the console industry (thank you for sharing that with us twice with the exact same post btw) is a little different than what we are dealing with here. A console game burned on a CD/DVD/Blu-ray (especially today’s games that weigh in at several gigabytes of data) is a little harder to update than a relatively small app that is digitally distributed. Even your post indicates they responded with “tens of bugs per day” in that environment. In Apple’s/YNAB’s case the response has been to request a single, trivial item every week and do nothing in between with this app.
I’m not in a hurry for the iPhone app, but I have to say it must be extremely frustrating for you guys that they’re taking so long and kicking it back like they are! No worries on my end–I know it’s coming, and I couldn’t be happier with YNAB (I bought YNAB3 just about a month or so ago, and I was already hooked–and now YNAB4 with even more features!! I’m happy!)!
Yes its frustrating, but the reason Apple have such great products is because they demand such high standards. YNAB have managed to exact the same standards for their product, the fact that YNAB still have to go through the Apple approval process should only mean that the product is great. Better to have it properly approved app, than have users enrolled as beta testers on incomplete products as Windows did for years. I’m an Apple fan, I even own shares at one stage, I’m finding this process frustrating and I have to remind myself that it is these exact standards that’s made Apple such a big success. Apple could and should clarify their requirements for app approval, which should streamline their approval system, holding Apple to the same standards they have set for others. I feel bad for the YNAB team and as a user of YNAB I fully understand everyone’s frustrations but I think we can all agree that it is better to demand the highest standards than to have to handle the problems on the back end of it all. Fingers crossed hopefully it’s approved soon. Patience.
Gotta love Apple’s high standards. Just like that trojan app they approved. It took all your contacts, uploaded them then started spamming them. Yep, gotta love those high standards.
Yes, you should love them, because this incident with that app was an exception. They check thousands of thousands of apps and it is quite a successful work, that they managed to protect users so far. Of course this brings limitations for developers and users, but in the end, it is more secure and reliable than any other open system, so far. And so far, so good.
An isolated incident huh? Just like those apps earlier this year that were taking the contacts and uploading them to a server without permission. There were quite a few doing that. Not just one.
http://gizmodo.com/5885321/how-iphone-apps-steal-your-contact-data-and-why-you-cant-stop-it
Just like carrierIQ that was sending tracking info.
Just like the several apps that have been released that enabled tethering. Just like the app that let you pretend to shake a baby. Yep Apple really checks the apps thoroughly.
If you think they’re actually checking every app for security issues, you’ve had a little too much apple kool-aid. They probably check the apps for obvious porn and to see if apple can make some more money off of them.
Actually, iOS apps crash more than Android apps, but don’t let that spoil the narrative.
We’re frustrated….true. I’m annoyed with Apple…true. But I get enough of the “My device is better then your device.” “Apple Kool Aid drinking sheep” nonsense on the smartphone forums. Please don’t ruin my budgeting discussions for me as well…
How in the world do all of the crappy, useless apps get approved, but not this one? Granted, there are a lot of great ones too. Having already switched to 4, I am waiting… waiting… Good luck!
It’s no longer certain that my next phone upgrade will be an iPhone. Their rigidity and control have just about worn me out.
Fortunately YNAB 3 is still such a good product that waiting to upgrade isn’t such a frustration. Imagine having to schlog through some competitor’s substandard product for this long and then when the upgrade finally comes along, it’s even more substandard than the previous one and there were no helpful videos to teach you how to use the piece of crap and then you find out that although the developor may have been willing to refund your money for all the hassle you’ve been through, since you bought it from the App Store, Apple’s not willing to make the refund happen….I’m not bitter…I’m not talking about any particular competitor whose name might not be like: $+deep cavernous pit with water at the bottom of it. I’m very happy with YNAB 3, 4 and beyond! It’s the most fun I’ve had budgeting…like ever!
I agree the latest version of that product was released too early and without support materials. However it has matured very nicely and is a very capable personal finance app. There are many features in it that YNAB users are constantly asking for. YNAB 4 is so good, I will move back to it if syncing works well, but you are very wrong to call the other product crap.
Thank you, YNAB team, for keeping us in the loop. In the long run, it will be worth it, and we will quickly forget about this delay. You guys have done a great job updating us!
Hang in there! I’m looking forward to the upgrade, for several reasons. I think it will allow my wife and I to see the our current financial status easily. Still. like Cheryl and Nicki, I’m happy with Version 3. It is solid, and has been for a long time, so I can wait.
I feel for the folks who upgraded their desktops and are stuck without connectivity with their mobile devices.
I was a little concerned about what Joh had to say about Dropbox security, that even if a file is transmitted securely to Dropbox, Dropbox converts it to clear text. Encryption of financial data is a basic requirement for any networked application. On the other hand, given that YNAB transmits and receives data securely, Dropbox guarantees the privacy of data stored in nonpublic folders on Dropbox, and since YNAB does not access online accounts directly but instead processes downloaded files of transactions, all that YNAB stores on your computers and devices or on Dropbox are transactions and budgets, not passwords that allow access to banking online.
YNAB is an elegant, reliable program. I can wait for the new version. I hope all elements of it are out soon.
There are certainly more secure cloud storage solutions that dropbox out there but not many so pervasive or easy to use. The fact that over the wire encryption is covered is good enough for me since I’m not storing credit card or bank data in my YNAB file. If you want to hear the nitty gritty techy bits the podcast Security Now did a review of cloud storage solutions a few weeks ago and tore them each apart with the positives and negatives.
There was actually a news article today about how app store apps are going out with binary corruption and crashing upon opening – apple has admitted to developers that there is an issue and are working on it – don’t know if that has any impact on the approval process or not but I should think a minor delay would be expected while they sort it out.
Apple’s App Store is currently infected with a Trojan that has caused some app updates to be corrupted, it seems we’re caught in the wake of them being EXTRA careful and ULTRA meticulous about app updates. I’m loving YNAB 4 by the way, can’t wait for the app, waiting patiently.
Apple has an incredible number of apps to review and approve and the truth is, all of us iOS users benefit from the care they take. It might have been a better idea to wait until the iOS app was approved before releasing YNAB 4, but it will all be resolved soon enough, I’m sure.
I don’t think that’s the truth at all.
Apple’s been dealing with a huge corrupt file issue in the app store the past week. I suspect that’s why it’s taken an unusual amount of time to approve them.
I’m sorry you’ve been having problems with the process but as a consumer I’m grateful Apple has some type of system in place.
With this delay, will it be possible to get an extension on the YNAB4 trial?
Yeah, if it comes down to that.
I just had 4 apps that had been updated over the last week show up as updates again, so it must be pretty widespread… hopefully they will get moving on ynab and any other apps that have been caught up in these kinds of delays soon…
YNAB Lite is in the App Store
I think the reviewers at Apple just got sucked in to doing their own budgets using YNAB since they had free access to it. They know if they release it they’ll have to fork up $65 ;)
Hi, working perfectly on iphone 4, tried on iphone 3Gs but crashes, It just goes off while loading, any ideas, is it compatible.