If you follow ThinkMac on Twitter then you may have noticed about five weeks ago I tweeted “NewsLife 2 submitted to the App Store!”. Unfortunately as of the time of writing its still stuck in review. Now from what I hear from other developers the review time on the Mac App Store (MAS) is longer than on the iOS store. For that it usually takes about a week in my experience. It’s a lot longer than that on the MAS. However the kicker is I know of other apps that have been submitted, approved and subsequently had updates submitted and approved all within the time NewsLife has been in review. Why this is I really don’t know. I’m pretty sure NewsLife is playing by all the rules so I’m at a bit of a loss as to why it’s taking so long. As you can imagine it’s really frustrating for me. It’s been sitting there for a month not earning any money and all the time more competitors are piling into the MAS, so when it does eventually make it, the sales will potentially be lower than if it had been approved weeks ago.

So I’ve decided to release NewsLife 2 directly today and forgo waiting for the MAS approval to do a joint launch. NewsLife has been totally revamped for version 2 and I think you’ll love it. The direct download version will actually be more up-to-date than the version submitted to the MAS as I’ve had an extra month to add in some additional goodies. For you the customer at least, this cloud has a silver lining!