Several weeks ago, we reported on AMBER Alert, an iPhone application notifying users of law enforcement bulletins issued in response to certain child abductions.
After approximately a month of waiting for Apple to approve the application, the application's developer, Jonathan Zdziarski, published an open letter to Apple and Steve Jobs two days ago in which he expressed his frustration with the App Store review process.
The App Store review process is non-responsive to a cruel degree, and unfortunately, a month is sadly only a small amount of time compared to some of my other applications that Apple has chosen to flat out ignore for three months or more. While spending time developing commercial applications only to face Apple's silence is frustrating, to have an application (like AMBER Alert) developed solely on a volunteer basis, and for such a good cause as finding kidnapped children - to have this non-profit application ignored is entirely insulting.
Whether Apple got Zdziarksi's message or purely coincidence, AMBER Alert [App Store, Free] has been approved and is now available in the App Store.
We had also previously reported that Zdziarski would be making portions of AMBER Alert's code available for other developers to make their applications "AMBER Aware". Unfortunately, this is no longer possible due to restrictions necessitated by the application's use of a law-enforcement-only feed.
