Apple’s offices were closed 22/12 - 01/01, which is a not-insignificant chunk of those 19 days (not mentioning that their chosen launch date was the first day back)
People keep bringing this up, but the reality is that the US holiday season slowdown is only for a handful of days and not sufficient to explain a 19-day review time.
From Apple's announcement[1]:
> On average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours. However, reviews may take a bit longer to complete from December 22 to 27.
> Apple rejected our stand-alone free companion app “because it doesn’t do anything”.
It says on DHH’s blog. We can’t know for sure unless he shares a screenshot of it but more or less that is the reason because I was rejected with this same reason before.
It feels to me that, if you were going to make the complaint that DHH has, you would also explicitly mention that you had given them test account credentials. The actual reasonable complaint would be to say "we gave them test account credentials and they _still_ said our app was non-functional". But, that isn't the messaging here, it's not even mentioned.
Given that DHH has very public opinions about Apple, I find it hard to believe he would miss the opportunity to make such a slam dunk, unless it wasn't true to make that claim.
From Apple's announcement[1]:
> On average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours. However, reviews may take a bit longer to complete from December 22 to 27.
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=uijoypq9