BlackBerry® World™ Development

[SouthernTouch]

Well, yesterday RIM approved our latest update to SouthernTouch Spades, version 1.2.7.  Only problem was, a last-minute find-and-replace hack job accidentally broke all the buttons in the game.  I'm not even going to ask what kind of validation RIM did for the two days it was in review (though I am curious).  It's not like I did a better job of testing it than they did, so they get a pass.

But why can't I roll back a release, or just make it unavailable?  Since it's likely going to be a day or two before my new version is approved, what I ended up doing was just removing the app from sale.  OK, no problem.  I messed up, and it's going to cost me a few days of sales.  Except anyone who has purchased the game can still UPGRADE TO THE BROKEN RELEASE!

Am I making any sense?  Am I missing something?  Is it absolutely impossible for me to retract this release?  And to make matters even worse, anyone who does upgrade to my broken release may decide to write a review to let me know how they feel about it.  And after my new (and functional) release is approved, those users may want to modify their reviews to reflect their good feelings about my response.  But THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO, because AppWorld doesn't allow users to edit their reviews.  Even though software, and users' perceptions of it, will change over time, the review is an immutable constant.

I hope these gaps are on the roadmap with someone at RIM.  Am I alone in desiring this seemingly basic functionality?

Thanks,

[peter9477]

I feel for you, Darwin. Most of us here have seen those and other similar issues, and complained about them and, rarely, been informed improvements are "in the works". The sad part is that change seems to come so slowly... it's as though they have only one or two guys working on this, or there's not a dedicated group and they've been given higher priorities for the last while.

Given the importance of App World to the whole ecosystem's future success, it's surprising to me they haven't addressed these things far sooner, as they've been seen as structural problems with the system for so long.

Related/similar issues include how you can't synchronize changes to the description with your updates, how changes take anywhere from zero time to many days to propagate through, how users get useless cryptic error numbers which aren't documented, and on and on. This is not an area of RIM I feel comfortable defending...

[jonberry]

+1

[premini]

+1

[superdirt]

Agreed, we should be able to disable a release.

In the mean time, make version 1.2.7 compatible with one of the 8700 models (I don't think app world is available for the 8700) which should effectively make it incompatible with every phone and won't be delivered. They should be able to download the previous version.

Scott

[silver20]

App World's testing has never caught any of the major bugs that have made it through at times in my stuff... in one case an app worked on my test device and the sims but failed on almost all customer devices, yet it was approved by App World's 'test house'.

Like you I said, "well I can't blame them since I'm the **bleep** who put a buggy release out", but the testing they do doesn't seem worth the wait, really. But they are trying to manage their store responsibly and that's good, we don't want App World overrun like MobiHand.

If we could have a button to ban a release we discover to be buggy that would be good for sure.

[testworks]

+1 from me too.

It would also be super useful if there was a way to instigate contact with a reviewer. Today I got a half-star review for my app stating:

"cant get a fix", with the description "i have to wait like 20 minutes to get a fix".

None of this is in my control (the PlayBook has been notoriously slow at getting GPS fixes for some reason or other), and this is the first person to complain out of the 500-odd who have purchased it.

[peter9477]

Another use case...

I just got a nice 5-star review, which I'd like to deny.

What? Are you insane (I hear you ask)? :-)

Well, it was left on the wrong app. A user bought two of my apps, liked them, and put in a review. Wrong app.

No way to edit it. No way to remove and let them re-try.

I'm left with the options of leaving it and having people confused reading it (it makes no sense at all applied to the wrong one), or denying a perfectly good 5-star review.

Sigh. I think I'll leave it for now, just for the laughs... and maybe some day in the distant future the user will be able to edit it.