Back in July, we put the finishing touches on our Jibebuy 1.0 mobile apps and submitted them to the Apple and Google app stores for approval. Here are the highlights:

  • The 1.0 version app was “Waiting for Review” for about 7 days, then “In Review” for about 4 hours.
  • The 1.1 version update was “Waiting for Review” for about 7 days, then “In Review” for about 4 minutes.

The update was approved at 1:16pm today. 5 hours later, I could it on the app store and my phone (it might have been available earlier, but I checked at 6:18pm):

I didn’t get any questions or comments from Apple – just an anonymous email saying the status had changed.

Cordova/PhoneGap App Background Info

The main Jibebuy  web app is a single page web app based on AngularJS. We were able to quickly turn our web app into mobile apps for iOS and Android with Apache Cordova. (We also have a 100% native iOS app, but that is another story.) We weren’t sure if we would get approved with a Cordova based app, but you can see that we did. I studied the App Store Review Guidelines pretty carefully and I felt like we did a pretty good job hitting all the key points. The Review Guidelines incorporate the iOS Human Interface Guidelines by reference. There are a few areas, like putting a logo in the header, where we went against the advice given and a few other areas where I wasn’t 100% sure but decided to submit and see what happens.

I don’t want to give anybody the wrong idea – even though our app is Cordova based and mostly uses the same code as our responsive Angular web app, we didn’t just wrap up an existing multi-page web site. We put a lot of effort into small but not inconsequential details like scrolling, properly sizing elements for different devices and handling orientation changes to make sure we had a great mobile experience.

You must be at least 17 years old to download this app

Also of note – we are tagged with “You must be at least 17 years old to download this app” due to “Unrestricted Web Access”. When I filled out the forms on the app store, it was clear to me that this would be the case, but I didn’t know this was going to happen during development of the app. The reason for this tag is because we incorporate a web browser that lets you type URLs directly into the address bar. In contrast, the app browsers in Facebook, Twitter, etc. do not let you type URLs directly – you have to type the URL a post or tweet, then click on the link in your post.

If you want to see a Cordova app in action (on iOS or Android), feel free to download Jibebuy and create a list. It is a free service, developed by your fellow NextSpacers. You might even find it useful!

Good luck with your own efforts!