iSpell Inizio

By December App Store review process was overwhelmed prompting Apple to take itunesconnect down for Christmas week. Once November's "blanket rejections" didn't help Apple switched to approving apps left and right without much reviewing. iSpell Inizio in app-purchases were not tested, but the app was in review for just 8 days from Dec. 8th to Dec. 16th. By Christmas the app was buried behind crap-ware yielding worst initial two weeks sales ever.
Clearly, App Store is broken for both updates and new releases.

iSpell Casa

The day after an update to iSpell Casa that Apple never tested got approved I submitted the new one fixing in-app purchase downloads. That was on Oct. 21. For almost a month Apple didn't even look at the app, rather on Nov. 19 "blanket rejected" iSpell Casa with other apps that similarly were pending review for 2+ weeks. The update was resubmitted next day - Nov 20. This time around Apple did test in-app purchases on Dec 07 and approved the app next day. All in all the update was in review for 48 days. With no incentives to release updates to apps buried behind a pile of crap-ware it is to be seen if there would be new updates to iSpell apart from the ones already in the pipeline.

9 days later iSpell Casa scored the first in app purchase and yet another 9 days later another one (both were for "Inizio"). On 12/24 there was another in app-purchase. This time for "Animali". All in all 3 in app-purchases from 3 different devices in 3 weeks on what seems to be 5 updates and 2 new purchases.

iSpell Mé

An update to iSpell Mé adding in app-purchases of new lessons was submitted for review on 10/18/09. Apple didn't even look at the app, rather on Nov. 19 Apple "blanket rejected" iSpell Mé with other apps that similarly were pending review for over 2 weeks. (In-app purchase receipts are logged on my server, so I could see when Apple is testing. There was no receipts for iSpell Mé logged). The update was resubmitted next day - Nov 20. This time around Apple did test in-app purchases on Dec 01 and approved the app next day. All in all the update was in review for 45 days making it the second longest review process.

In a month there was no in-app purchases from iSpell Mé and just 2 updates. Is there a reason to release updates to apps buried under a pile of crap-ware?

iSpell Casa

iSpell Casa was the test app for an update adding in-app purchases of new lessons. It was submitted for review on 9/28/09 and was hanging in review for 3 weeks. In-app purchase receipts are logged on my server, so I could see when Apple is testing. There was no receipts logged for iSpell Casa. Moreover, in-app purchases were broken, yet on Oct. 20, 2009 the update was approved.

iSpell Животные

Hoping that updates would improve sales on Jan. 12, 2009 I released updates to iSpell Животные and iSpell Animali. About 40% of purchases updated mostly within first week, but there was no improvements to sales whatsoever.

iSpell

Magiecom is a label to release foreign language training apps for mobile devices. It was started with an idea of a talking flash card app, but pretty fast the idea grew into a set of language training apps covering different aspects of foreign language learning. They are iSpell for spelling training, iDrill - a game to help memorize the words and their prononciation and iCards - flash cards application used for revision.

First to the market was iSpell that got submitted in Sept 2008 and got approved around Oct 20. 2008 for the following languages: Russian, English, French, Italian, Spanish, German.

The first lesson was "Animals".