At last I received a sign from the folks at Apple that my application to the iPhone developer program was moving ahead!
I received confirmation of my original application a few days later on Feb 7th, 2009, then just today March 4th I got a phone call saying that I had been accepted. That was following a number of forms being filled, my company incorporation certificate being faxed over, and a few chasing emails. And a month of waiting! Somehow I thought it would be faster but reading around it seems about average these days.
But the whole process I’ve found suprisingly bumpy – there are many aspects that could be improved.
First you get an email titled Iphone Development Program Enrollment Status which invites you to click on a link leading to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. After that’s done you’re invited to pay $99 to sign up to the program, then you receive an email that invites you to look at your electronic download, which in fact turns out to be nothing you can download.
The trick, pointed out in the above-mentioned site, is you must then wait up to 24 hours, then you login to the Iphone Developer site, then in the top right corner you’ll see a link which indicates you can start the process of setting up your developer certificate.
One little email explaining the process would have been very welcome guys :-/
UPDATE: a full 24 hours later, I got the iPhone Developer Program Activation Code email, but even with this there was more funny business. You are invited to click on the link in the email to activate your account, then you are taken to a page that says, “check your email for a confirmation code that you need to paste into the form field below”.
That email never came, however the form field was pre-populated with a code that in my case worked.