This shutdown happens every year and has at least one awesome effect for consumers: Price schedules are determined before the holiday and locked down from any changes until after the holiday. Since many game publishers are providing deep discounts during this period of time, this means you can take your time making purchasing decisions without worrying that a sale price will disappear if you don't buy right now.
Here are some examples of the amazing deals you can get in the App Store for the next few days:
Every iOS developer has been made aware of this for quite some time now. Most of us knew it was coming before it was announced because they've been doing this every year for quite some time now. The itunes connect/app approval team needs a break. They work 51 weeks out of the year, including weekends (I've had an app get approved on a Sunday). They deserve a vacation more than anyone I know.
It would be nice if you could still view existing reports, crash reports, and issue promo codes during this time period though. Those are all automated and will still function without the employees there. Last year was the first year I experienced this, and I definitely wasn't expecting the entire thing to be offline.
By that same logic, half the Internet should just shut down on major holidays; or even simply on weekends. There was no one working at my bank to help me if I had a silly website issue yesterday, but they didn't take the site down because of that: I could still check my balance, and if I had a problem with the site I'd just have to wait until their working hours came back.
There really aren't that many skilled, mentally healthy people who actually want to work overnight/holiday shifts. It's pretty much always the guy who drew the shortest straw or desperately needs the night shift differential
I can't imagine it'd be that hard for a corporation the size and global breadth of Apple to find workers in their European, Australian, etc. offices to do "overnight" shifts during their daytimes, and I've known Jewish/Muslim/atheist/Hindu/etc. folks who love holiday pay.
I had the opportunity to talk to two ladies from the review team in person at a recent Apple event and my impression was that they really know what they're doing.
Weird given the completely ridiculous decisions that come out of that team. I wonder if they're tremendously overworked or if the skill level of their staff is wildly inconsistent.
Agree, and in addition if you know the URL you can still acces the iAd reports and the sales and trend web interface. Only the web app for managing existing apps or changing prices is not available.
and for those that don't have a clue what this is or what relevance in holds:
"iTunes Connect is a suite of web-based tools that allow you to submit and manage your apps for distribution on the App Store and Mac App Store.
In iTunes Connect you can check the status of your contracts, set up your tax and banking information, obtain sales and finance reports, request promotional codes, and manage users, apps, metadata, and your In-App Purchase catalog."
Here are some examples of the amazing deals you can get in the App Store for the next few days:
Gameloft: http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/20/christmas-sale-gameloft-do...
EA: http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/20/christmas-sale-every-ea-pu...
Telltale: http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/19/christmas-sale-basicallyte...
Crescent Moon: http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/19/christmas-sale-all-of-cres...
Square Enix: http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/22/christmas-sale-square-enix...
This year I ended up buying every title listed from Crescent Moon and a bunch of titles from the others as well.