As someone who’s big into preparation, I had all sorts of questions as we worked on our first iPhone application, a nifty math puzzler called Brain Thaw. What did we have to do to become registered iPhone developers? How long could we expect that process to take? Once we had a finished application, how long would it be before it was available at the App Store? I had no shortage of questions.

So, as a service to iPhone initiates who share my curiosity/neuroses, I’ve chronicled how the process went for Brain Thaw from an administrative point of view. Your experience will almost certainly be different, though this should at least provide you with a clearer idea of what to expect as you roll out your first iPhone application.

• July 15, 2008 : Applied for the iPhone Developer Program (iPDP) as a business (LLC). We applied for the Standard Program.
• July 28, 2008 : Faxed our business registration certificate to Apple. This was in response to an e-mail an ADC representative sent us requesting a form of identity for our business. Eligible documents include the following (pasted from the e-mail):
  • Articles of incorporation
  • Business license
  • Certificate of formation
  • DBA “Doing Business As…”
  • Fictitious name statement
  • Registration of trademark
  • Charter documents
  • Partnership papers
  • Reseller or vendor license
• August 15, 2008 : Accepted to the iPDP. A bit of gentle prodding can be effective at this stage. After waiting weeks without a response from Apple on any of our e-mails, we decided to give them a call. According to the ADC representative, the only step remaining was for them to verify our business phone number: she called our business line, we answered, and within a few minutes we received our activation e-mail. A few clicks and a license agreement later, we were ready to go with an account at the iPDP Portal and iTunes Connect.
• December 10, 2008 : Submitted Paid Applications Contract at iTunes Connect. This is something we should have handled much sooner, not two days before submitting our application. In order to distribute a commercial application, you must sign a Paid Contract and provide your bank and tax information. Apple must review your information before the contract is activated, so don’t wait too long to take care of this. You can submit an application as soon as you’ve been accepted to the iPDP, and it can even be approved without an active contract, but it won’t actually be posted for sale until your contract has been activated. Free applications require no such approval process.
• December 12, 2008 : Submitted Brain Thaw to the App Store. It helps to prepare all of your application metadata beforehand (see the iPhone Developer Program User Guide below). The availability date is of particular interest: this date will be listed as the release date on your application’s product page in the store. You’ll need to update it if your application is approved after your availability date and you wish to be displayed at the top of lists sorted by release date — Apple will not update it for you. You’ll probably want to change it to the date your application was approved or the day after.
• December 13, 2008 : Paid Applications Contract approved. I’ve heard stories of it taking weeks for other developers to have their contracts approved. Luckily, it only took us a few days, which was fortunate given that we were hoping to have Brain Thaw available for sale before Christmas.
• December 16, 2008 : Brain Thaw approved to the App Store. Hooray! We received the approval e-mail on the evening of the 16th. Brain Thaw was available at the App Store by the following morning with a release date of December 12, 2008 (the availability date we had specified when submitting the application). We changed the availability date to the 17th that morning, a change that was reflected in the release date later that evening.

I highly recommend the following resources if you’re interested in learning more: the iPhone Developer Program User Guide (pdf) and Publishing on the App Store (video). The User Guide is only available to registered iPhone developers: you’ll find a download link on the home page of the iPDP Portal under Portal Resources. Publishing on the App Store is available at the iPhone Dev Center under Getting Started Videos.