Has the App Store turnaround process significantly improves in 2010?

By

stopwatch

The iTunes App Store approval process is infamous for its impenetrability, its arbitrariness and its Leviathan-like slowness to move. Yet Apple’s been remarkably good about improving the App Store approval process in recent months: sure, apps are rejected as arbitrarily as ever, but recent changes to iTunes Connect have made figuring out just how far through the process an app is to approval or rejection far more transparent. But if recent dev reports are anything to go by, Apple might have also managed to improve approval times as well.

According to some of the developers quoted by TUAW, Apple has significantly improved the turnaround time of app approval. In fact, some of the new turnaround times border on the preternatural. Consider Atomic Cactus’ anecdote:

I’m a developer behind Atomic Cactus, we have 3 games currently in the app store, and they all took approximately 2-3 weeks to get approved. Today at 4:00 am I submitted for approval our latest app, which isn’t exactly a “fart app” (it’s a pretty polished puzzle game with OpenFeint). As of 1:30 pm today, the app is in the app store.

In other words, Atomic Cactus submitted an app and had it approved in a little under ten hours. Amazing, and heartening to hear if true! Any app developers out there able to confirm or deny an improvement in App Store turnaround time? Let us know in the comments.

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