I just heard a talk from the founder/developer of
Fieldrunners last week. He was the main programmer and there was an artist on the project. He mentioned aiming for the launch of the app store, and it sounded like he met that maybe within a few weeks of launch with 6 months of development time and working with Objective C on an iMac and testing near the end of the cycle on the phone itself.
Fieldrunners was a huge success story, but listening to his talk it definitely sounds like a wild west/garage story. The developer, Jamie Gotch also works at 38 Studios, so he wasn't a novice with development.
I didn't get the impression the certification process was heavy at all, although like all things it probably will be eventually. The sentiment that Apple was/is overwhelmed is totally true.
