To recall, these buttons are used to adjust the amount of room that you wish to book for a hotel (most often : only one).

Goodbye AddContact button from Apple. Goodbye blue background, welcome to the green one, same color as the bottom big Reservation / Total button. And for the shape : a square with rounded edges instead of disk. Finally, the “effect” : inset in place of drop shadow.

Before/after compared :

And you, what is your opinion on this makeover ?

We are not disappointed, it was even in our forecasts. The reason ? Misuse of an Apple interface element reserved for the addition of contacts (more details later in the article). They are professionals to the end and defend the consistency of their user interface. We almost apreciated this rejection, it means somewhere that real attention is paid to our work.

What is interesting is that we have some traces of the visit of our tester

The AddContact button

Mea culpa, we could have avoided this first rejection in a few respects better Apple recommendations, very (too much for the time we had ?) well documented.

We have used the reserved AddContact button. It is more (”+”) in white color over a blue disk whose edge is white, all with a drop shadow. We made the mistake of using it in our view “available rooms for a hotel”. In our case, it can increment the amount of a type of room. But as its name suggests, Apple dedicated it to add contacts … key function on a phone !

We expected the worst reasons for rejection. So we will promptly correct this.

Behind the scenes of Apple test

We were able to trace the session of our tester to have more information about the validation process from Apple and make coins in our previous purely speculative article. It is quite instructive.

The places, the testing conditions

Our tester used an iPhone on ATT’s 3G network, from Los Angeles, California.

Because the application is connected to the internet, we much care about the quality of this connection and our interconnections with telecom operators worldwide. We have measured the latency of its mobile network and we felt pretty good.

Our servers are located in France and we want to provide the best quality service around the world. We need to measure before taking action. We propose soon to volunteer users to give us details and measurements using the application in different parts of the globe.

Test duration

It was very fast: less than 2 minutes ! This confirms what we had calculated.

We must say for our defense that zzZ is very fast, for several obvious reasons:

• The design and usability of the application are simple to understand, my grandmother 80 years who had never used the iPhone in his life managed to book a hotel within 5 minutes !
• The number of calls to “internet” is reduced and optimized to reduce wait times. Our expert network has given much thought to this constraint throughout the application design (and we still have a margin for growth to come in future updates)
• In the list of results (coverflow) hotels are listed by increasing prices, no need to look any longer for the best hotel at the best price, it will necessarily be in the first results

The research of our tester

For the curious among you : He wanted a hotel in San Francisco, then consulted the first hotel in the hit list: “Hotel North Beach”.

He spent almost half the length of the test to see the profile of this hotel :

• Photo gallery
• Detailed information
• Geolocation of the hotel via builtin google maps

Finally, he pressed the button to select his room. The test was stopped there because of our misuse of the AddContact button.

In conclusion

We deplore the fact that he just have not pursued until after the test until the final act of booking.

What Will it be the next review of the application ? Parts not consulted during this test it will pass the validation process ? We will keep you informed as a result of our adventures …

It’s our first submission, all is new for us. So we hope this mandatory step will roll to the end as best as possible and that we’ll have our ticket to finally deliver to you the result of our last months hard working !

Be patient… but we can’t help thinking that we’ll have at least one reject, because after all Apple recommandations in human interface are rich, our platform experience so fresh and our own interface very singular.

Indeed, except video games, we are among the only ones to have made a 100% horizontal mode application. This mode is cool because, in our view, it allows :

• A more comfortable input on the keyboard of the iPhone
• His panoramic aspect/ratio is ideal to view hotels pictures.

Anyway, we use this validation period to consider the following, the improvements we can make and the ideas that we had planned but not yet implemented in this first version.

10th july 2008, Apple launched the Appstore. That was 16 months ago…
In 16 months, the appstore have grown at an incredible speed and now offer more than 100 000 applications.

So, that means they approve 6250 applications aprouved / month . We also know from Apple that they reviewed 8500 iPhone apps per week.

Stating that each app has to be reviewed by two people, and they have 40 people working on it. That gives less than 6 minutes to review an app !

Is it really possible? Or Apple have other secrets ?

Let’s make some suggestions for fun :

1. The Technologic way :
   They use a supercomputer like HAL which scan apps (there is already a rumor about that !)
2. The Outsourcing way :
   They employed an army of iPhone geeks who review apps not for money but for pleasure.
3. The efficiency way :
   Apple’s employees can review apps while using firm’s toilets (sorry about that )
4. The “Less is More” way:
   They just simulate reviewing apps (that could explain the amount of crappy apps on Appstore !)… the submission process is just made to give emotions to developpers … Apple is really the master of suspense !
5. The Guru way :
   Steve jobs can simply detect “bad apps” by putting his hands over.

If you had another theory, please share it !

On the same topic :

• iPhone Apps Have to Be Approved by Robots Now, Too
• 40 staffers. 2 reviews. 8,500 iPhone apps per week