Comments on: True Confessions of an iPhone Developer – Bullshit Review Sites.

By: Squif

Squif — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:27:49 +0000

This is why a site like http://gotoats.org exists. Great post, guys.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:39:21 +0000

Thanks – I saw that earlier (Patrick emailed me). You have no idea how much that cost me!! Just kidding… I was totally floored when I saw that – even called my wife to tell her. Unfortunately that was sort of a downer because she had absolutely no idea who the heck I was talking about!

By: rotero

rotero — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:21:31 +0000

Brandon,

FYI: gcalWall Lite was mentioned in LifeHacker today.

By: fiuza78

fiuza78 — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 01:48:48 +0000

Sorry to hear that Brandon. I’m also a developer, and I know how bad it can be. Don’t give up on future developments!

By: psylichon

psylichon — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:31:14 +0000

Simply ridiculous. Thanks for the write-up.

By: PatrickJ

PatrickJ — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Jeff – thanks for the link. I just sent in a request to sign up, as we’ve believed in and adhered to those principles since the word go …

By: 148Apps

148Apps — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:35:25 +0000

A few of the sites, mine included, that got sick of being asked if we had “expedited review fees” have banded together to let everyone know that we have much higher standards than that. Take a look at http://gotoats.org for more info on who some of the good guys are and what we believe in.

Cheers,
Jeff

By: christopher meinck

christopher meinck — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:47:51 +0000

Wow, that speaks volumes about the journalistic integrity of some sites. Best of luck with the app.

By: mikelite

mikelite — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:44:25 +0000

yeah, I wanna know what sites too. I don’t want to contribute to any site’s page views that pulls this crap.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:51:45 +0000

Sorry … I left the names out because I didn’t feel right posting them. I will say that I only submitted to sites I read myself, I respected, and really thought I had a shot at getting covered on. I didn’t send to sites like TUAW and Macworld just because I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d get picked up.

I think I sent codes to 5 sites (since we only get a limited number of codes) and got 3 responses (all form responses). 148apps.com was the only one who didn’t hit me up for money. The 5 sites were pretty much a trial run. Given the responses… its the last run I’ll ever try.

By: Sebastien

Sebastien — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:21:06 +0000

Hey Brandon, sorry to hear about your adventures… In order to put full light on this practice, would you please give us a list of websites that asked for money? Did you encounter this problem with many websites or just one? Which one?

I believe this is an isolated case as I really doubt the “big names” of the iPhone blogging world would ask for money.

I decline almost every request for app review on my blog (especially those starting by “I just created the best app ever for…”). When I do feel like an app has potential, I usually ask for a promo code to the dev. That’s as far as it goes for me. I never thought about asking money to the devs for featuring their apps on my blog, and would never do that as it would be completely biased, thus useless.