Alan Quatermain

Alan Quatermain

The Tumblog of one Jim Dovey, iOS Software Chief Architect at Kobo in Toronto, Ontario.
He Twitters, he has an , and can occasionally be found on LinkedIn or Facebook.
If you have a query, you can ask it here.

This blog contains personal opinions, and is not endorsed by any company.

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It’s now ten minutes past 5pm in Cupertino. The Kobo iPad app is still in limbo. Seriously, Apple, I went out on a limb to convince people that we could do this great iPad app. We wrote it from scratch, despite concerns from above. I fought for it because not only did I believe that my team could do it (and boy, did we ever — you should see our velocity charts), but that you would be happy to have our app on your store. I really didn’t believe that you would get all political about it; I defended you guys against all the nay-sayers. I said that since iBooks wasn’t being bundled, that showed you weren’t getting political with it. Now, not only are you making me look bad by effectively proving me wrong, but you’re effectively thumbing your nose at everyone else at Kobo who’s had to do a ton of work to get everything ready for this launch. Not only have we made the jump to Agency pricing with some of our publishers, all of which was prompted by the appearance of iBooks (meaning the publishers would come and wave large sticks at every other e-book retailer in the world) for April 3rd— we’ve also made a large commitment to a number of different content formats, and people on all sorts of different teams at Kobo have needed to work night & day to get this all ready for last Saturday. Wait, last Saturday? Yes. Because in order to be on the app store for April 3rd, we were told we had to submit by 5pm PST April 27th. So we did. Eventually we heard back that our app was good, we could rebuild with the GM version of the iPad SDK and re-submit. So we did. And here we are. I’ve spoken with people whose iPad apps are on sale now who submitted yesterday. Yes, one day after the deadline. After some back-and-forth with the reviewers. So they actually got replies some time ago, and were able to get onto the store even with a very late update to their app. I’ve spoken with people who know lots of other iPad app developers, none of whom can find anyone else whose (timely submitted) apps are still in review. At this point I’m expecting one of two things: Kobo stays in limbo until after everyone has a chance to get hooked on iBooks first, i.e. Sunday or Monday, or sometime next week. Kobo stays in limbo for an indeterminate amount of time, like Google Voice. I don’t expect the app to be rejected— there’s no real reason for it to be so. We might be told that we can’t sell in the US I suppose, although I don’t really expect that to happen either. Overall I’m just rather drained right now. I’ve put everything into this work over the last couple of months, and it feels like I needn’t have bothered. We could have spent waited, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and instead put out an app with a ton of different and new features. But no, we got an app ready for early submission, and lo and behold we’re now stuck with nothing. *sigh*

It’s now ten minutes past 5pm in Cupertino. The Kobo iPad app is still in limbo.

Seriously, Apple, I went out on a limb to convince people that we could do this great iPad app. We wrote it from scratch, despite concerns from above. I fought for it because not only did I believe that my team could do it (and boy, did we ever — you should see our velocity charts), but that you would be happy to have our app on your store. I really didn’t believe that you would get all political about it; I defended you guys against all the nay-sayers. I said that since iBooks wasn’t being bundled, that showed you weren’t getting political with it.

Now, not only are you making me look bad by effectively proving me wrong, but you’re effectively thumbing your nose at everyone else at Kobo who’s had to do a ton of work to get everything ready for this launch. Not only have we made the jump to Agency pricing with some of our publishers, all of which was prompted by the appearance of iBooks (meaning the publishers would come and wave large sticks at every other e-book retailer in the world) for April 3rd— we’ve also made a large commitment to a number of different content formats, and people on all sorts of different teams at Kobo have needed to work night & day to get this all ready for last Saturday.

Wait, last Saturday?

Yes. Because in order to be on the app store for April 3rd, we were told we had to submit by 5pm PST April 27th. So we did. Eventually we heard back that our app was good, we could rebuild with the GM version of the iPad SDK and re-submit. So we did.

And here we are.

I’ve spoken with people whose iPad apps are on sale now who submitted yesterday. Yes, one day after the deadline. After some back-and-forth with the reviewers. So they actually got replies some time ago, and were able to get onto the store even with a very late update to their app.

I’ve spoken with people who know lots of other iPad app developers, none of whom can find anyone else whose (timely submitted) apps are still in review.

At this point I’m expecting one of two things:

  1. Kobo stays in limbo until after everyone has a chance to get hooked on iBooks first, i.e. Sunday or Monday, or sometime next week.
  2. Kobo stays in limbo for an indeterminate amount of time, like Google Voice.

I don’t expect the app to be rejected— there’s no real reason for it to be so. We might be told that we can’t sell in the US I suppose, although I don’t really expect that to happen either.

Overall I’m just rather drained right now. I’ve put everything into this work over the last couple of months, and it feels like I needn’t have bothered. We could have spent waited, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and instead put out an app with a ton of different and new features. But no, we got an app ready for early submission, and lo and behold we’re now stuck with nothing.

*sigh*