We reduced the price of our Punch-O-Meter app for a few days around the New Year. It was free from December 31-January 4 (originally $0.99). Early Monday, January 5, we changed to the price back to $0.99. Two hours later, Punch-O-Meter was taken out of the store!
I got the standard response from Apple: “Changes take 48 hours….” But why was it taken out of the store while changes were made? We finally got an answer from Apple today (after Punch-O-Meter’s 72 hour unscheduled hiatus from the App Store).
When we changed the price back to a dollar and clicked “Save Changes,” the year field on the app’s availability date automatically changed too. That is, the original availability date for Punch-O-Meter was November 15, 2008. The iTunes Connect servers changed the year to 2009. Therefore, without our knowing, Punch-O-Meter wasn’t scheduled to be available for another 10 months (November 15, 2009)! Unfortunately, there was no warning from Apple or alert on the iTunes Connect site.
Always be sure to check the “Availability Date” when making changes or updates to your app!
My theory, as others have mentioned, is that this is another artifact from the iTunes App Store using the same code as the iTunes Music Store. Songs are never updated, so the release date never changes.
UPDATE: Apple may have updated iTunes Connect as I tried experimenting with changing the price on another app then changing it back. The Year field didn’t change. However, I’d suggest you still check the availability date when updating your apps.
Posted: January 8th, 2009 by Joe Sriver
Tags: app disappeared, app is gone, app not appearing, App Store, app store updates, Apple, change date, iPhone, iTunes, price tiers