It's true - go ahead and look.
Every single unlucky soul that encounters the "status code 7000", "Team ID not yet configured for notarization" just stops developing for the mac, as they are left with no other option.
Based on a deep review of all posts on the subject in multiple online communities & web searches, here's what we know:
- This problem has existed since at least 2018
- People that drew the short straw are directed to contact Apple Developer Support via email
- Usually after 3 weeks an automated message is sent that the issue has been added to the queue of "the relevant team"
- Follow-up calls always indicate that the relevant team cannot be messaged even by Apple Support and that you just have to wait for them to contact you.
- In the past year, Apple now uses an AI bot to email you periodically to inform you that they are "monitoring" the situation and will let you know once "the relevant team" has completed their work. Apple makes it very clear you're trading emails back and forth with an LLM.
- The "relevant team" never, ever solves the problem or messages anyone. To be fair, the "relevant team" likely doesn't exist.
- Usually after 3 months, the average would-be developer gives up, and rues the day he paid the apple developer fee as well as all of the time & effort he'd put into making software on the Apple operating systems.
Nobody knows why some people get the 7000 error. It seems as if xcode just randomly assigns it to 20 or 30 people per year. But knowing that the "Team ID is not yet configured for notarization" issue is a problem that will never be solved, we need to formulate some alternatives.
Some of the avenues I'm brainstorming:
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Notarize under a different Team ID. This one stings because I went through so much trouble to create an LLC, all for nothing. Apple binds legal entities (DUNS numbers) with Team ID's. So my cursed Team ID and my new LLC cannot be used. My wife is a casual Apple user, I could set her up with her own dev account. That's torching another $99 as well as losing the protection of an LLC (for which I'd paid about $500 for).
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Sell my apps un-notarized. Apple treats the "7000 lottery losers" so badly that this might be the only path forward. Apparently a brew cask install in order to circumvent the traditional gates. Fellow devs probably don't mind this, but some of my apps are intended for the general public. Still not ideal.
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Remove 30% of my app's functionality and sell only the mac app store. That's a lot of feature losses that I'd spent months on.
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Ask any of the thousands of devs that didn't get randomly stricken by the status code 7000 curse to submit the app for notarization. Brand mismatch in Gatekeeper, but at least then we in the Apple Developer's Program can once again participate in the program we paid to be in.
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Set up our apps as open source, and include a link for funds. That means the LLC formation was a complete waste of $500.
There's not a single Apple employee reading this that can help get us out predicament. If there was, we would have had at least one post anywhere on the internet about successfully overcoming the statuscode 7000 issue. Instead its just hundreds of posts by fee-paying developers saying they waited two, three, or 6 months before finally giving up and moving on to windows & linux software development.
For the rest of my life, I'm going to wonder the following:
- Why was I singled out to get this status code error?
- If this problem has existed for at least 8 years, and has hundreds of posts about it, why is every single Apple support specialist completely clueless as to the cause of it?
- Why doesn't Apple have resolution metrics? That's got to be hundreds of unresolved status 7000 cases that have piled up. The company doesn't do any kind of internal reviews? Do they seriously mark cases as closed once its sent to "the relevant team"?
- And finally....don't Apple employees also think it's weird that "the relevant team" is a nameless, unknowable group that can never be contacted by their fellow co-workers? Like, everyone at Apple Support knows a phone number to reach the head office, or some method to reach C-suite secretarial pool. But the "relevant team" has no internal phone number available that other Apple staff can contact?
For 25 days, I've spent between two and six hours each day trying to resolve my status code 7000 problem. That's time I've spent away from work and family, just to keep trying to resolve this issue. Knowing now that it will never be resolved does help as I try to pick up the pieces of my failed software development plans.
Quinn/mods - please don't delete this. The people who get the status error need to know this. Absolutely no one who gets the 7000 code should be given false hope that "Oh just contact Apple Developer Support to resolve." At this point there's got to be hundreds of us that know the bitter truth that 7000 is a permanent, lifelong block. These unlucky devs need to immediately face reality so they can figure out the solutions to best navigate their business.