The answer is AI-assisted review or just pure AI reviews by Apple.

Apple should charge $179 for speeding up a review, or you wait even longer.

I'm sure there are much more submitted apps due to vibecoding and it being kind of a hype right now. I see your point and can also imagine that Apple will change to e.g. AI reviews. But in long term I'd expect the current wave of new submissions to flatten out and Apple might also just hire some more reviewers instead of automating the process. I mean they will also earn more money due to new developer fees and in-app-purchases, so there might not be any need at all to potentially lowering the quality of their review process.

> app review is taking significantly longer, with some people being stuck in review for 3+ days, and some reporting even a week of waiting for review

A whole week? Maybe, developers should stop pushing those incredibly frequent updates with “bug fixes and performance improvements”, and start testing their code in house again?

I think Apple should provide an online service that does basic fully automated testing such as “does the app start” and “does it only use approved APIs”, and, for the real final review, prioritize updates on how long ago the previous review was done. Send an update once a month, and you’ll be reviewed almost immediately. Send one a day after the previous one, and you’ll have to wait a bit.