I bought few iBeacons today and started playing with ios SDK.
I read in one of the apple forum that we can build and distribute a Apple Passbook pass to users and it can show notification to user when it detects a specific iBeacon.(https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6028034?tstart=0) This feature don't need any app to be installed on the user mobile device. Is this a correct info?
I have been searching the web for exact reference and unfortunately cant find anything very specific to this except sites like passkit.com who promises to build such passbook pass and distribute for you, but since its paid can't try.
Any help/info/reference will be really helpful which can help be build from scratch.
TIA.
Yes, it is possible to send a notification about a Passbook pass to an iOS user when they come near a beacon. They do not need a special app to do this (just the Passbook app, which is pre-installed). The user, however, does need to have installed the pass just like any other Passbook pass.
This works by embedding beacon identifier information in the pass itself. When the Passbook app installs the pass. It starts looking for that beacon in the background. When the device comes across it, the Passbook app sends a notification to the user.
My colleague wrote a detailed blog post about how to do this here. No payment required!
Related
I have an app created for internal use. I have not published it on the play store, but I have to update it regularly.
Can anyone help...with which library should I use for implementing a self-upgrade system to my app. Any answer would be appreciated.
The answer is - yes,
You can upload your app to the Apple Store and Google Play but Not publish it to the public, instead, you can use internal testing
So only users that you define will be able to see or download your app in the Google Play and Apple Store
Google Play internal test https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9303479?hl=en
Apple test flight https://developer.apple.com/testflight/
Yep it has some limitations, for example, Apple allows up to 10000 testers but I hope it's ok for your company, but its only way to share app internally without any issues on iOS (android allow you to download apps from anywhere, iOS don't)
The answer is - no, you can't do that - not at least the Flutter* apps. As #Abion47 said, you can publish the new APK and ask users to install it. If you app involves back-end then you can check the (client) mobile app version and display the alert if the version is below minimum version required.
On the iOS side, it is slightly more difficult. For internal use, the organisation needs to sign-up with Apple's enterprise program. You can then distribute the app internally.
*- I've seen certain apps downloads the zip (or whatever) file, and updates themselves without actually going through App update process via AppStore/Playstore. However, it is more of a web part within the particular app which gets updated. The app version as such remains same.
My client needs to find a way to automatically push app updates to a number of iphone 3gs devices remotely. These devices will be in guided access mode so the users will only be able to access the app in question.
I believe we have two option for distribution:
B2B custom app via the Volume Purchase Program
In-house app released with the Apple Enterprise Program
Having researched our options I can see that over the air app updates can be achieved by either:
Building an in-app update functionality to check for new updates (Enterprise only I am guessing?) and automatically update and restart the app
Using an MDM such as http://www.air-watch.com/ (as I understand Apple Configurator must have devices plugged in via USB to work?)
I am wondering if anyone can tell me whether either of those options are possible with the devices being in guided access mode?
Or are there any other solutions, which I have missed, that can automatically manage the app remotely while the device is in guided access mode?
You can solve this with an Enterprise distributed app.
App only. Update check for an OTA-Update from your app when the app is coming to the foreground (or some other metric at your clients leisure, like added time delay, etc). Basically self explanatory; you implement a call to your clients/your API to check the version and inform the user of a new one. The update can either be optional or mandatory (preferably announced by the API and changed when needed); present the user with an alert about it. The user acts upon it and you OTA install via an ITMS link provided by your API call. And that's it.
MDM. Tbh, I'm a bit on shaky ground here. Theoretically this is all possible via MDM too, however I am not sure if it is the (varying) MDM solutions or some misconfigurations, but clients usually seem to lose control after some time.
Both. Yes, you can perfectly well live with both. MDM while everything is fine, and as a backup a well structured App+API mechanism to push the OTA updates out. This is especially useful if you have customers where some departments are under MDM and others are not. So, some may get it via MDM (and if all else fails via the App itself), the rest will get it via the App.
The tradeoffs are a matter of personal preference, if there is a fully working MDM solution in place the update will be pushed out and the user however 'malicious' can do nothing against it. But the same is true for the 'App only' solution, as you have the option to not let him use the app if he does not update (either by not providing a cancel button or, as you are in an enterprise environment and there it is allowed doing an exit(0)).
From experience I prefer any solution that has the 'App only' option as it is the last fallback if anything on client side fails. Whatever may be added on top is just sugar to the cake.
While not strictly relevant, the 'App only' solution always goes well with Push Notifications when an update came out.
One of my iphone app rejected by apple. Here is reason from resolution center.
We found that your app uses analytics software to collect and send
device data to a third party, which is not in compliance with the iOS
Developer Program License Agreement.
3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect user or device data without prior user consent, and then only to provide a service or
function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application, or
to serve advertising. You may not use analytics software in Your
Application to collect and send device data to a third party.
Specifically, your application is transmitting the user's MAC address
without their prior consent. It would be appropriate to either remove
this behavior from your application or obtain the user's consent."
Not used any analytics sdk. Only 3rd party sdk used are - Chartboost, Revmob, facebook-ios-sdk, Nextpeer. How can I resolve this problem? how can find which sdk has problem ?
I got reply from apple for same problem. Apple indicated its nextpeer multiplayer sdk issue. User device info is collected in the game. Easy fix is to indicate it in EULA.
See these screenshot.
How are you? This issue most likely wasn't caused by us here at Nextpeer but I will happily look into this for you on our end. If you could please email me (alexander#nextpeer.com) with what SDK version you used during this rejection and your bundle ID, I will check it out for you.
Look forward to hearing back from you.
Nextpeer solved this issue in the 1.5.2 release of the SDK. There is no longer any need to make an addition to the EULA.
How do I know? Because I emailed alexmussafi and asked him :) But he's not found time to update the answer and I wanted to save anyone else the trouble.
Is there any provision in iOS wherein the referral parameters used to start the iTunes application are passed on to the application on its first run?
For example in Android, if I use a link such as http://market.an......com.company.pany&referrer=heythere to download an app on Android and actually install the app, the Market app passes the "referrer" parameter and its value to the app on its first run, which the app can use to any extent.
Is there a similar provision in iOS?
We also struggled with this when we built our last mobile app, Kindred Photobooks. The best way we found is to basically bundle that information in the link and use fingerprinting to make that data available after install, which is working really well.
You can try to build fingerprinting in in house. Basically the steps would be the following:
1. When a link gets created, appending parameters to the link, or create a link reference in some backend database if you want shortened links
2. When a user clicks on that link, collect a fingerprint of their device from everything you can read in the browser (for example: IP, OS, screen size, etc) and redirect that user to the app store.
3. When the app opens, create a similar fingerprint from the same parameters collected in app, and match it up in your database to the outstanding fingerprint.
4. If there is a match, you can return those link parameters to the app through install.
Alternatively, if you don't want to build all that infrastructure and handle the many edge cases, we bundled it up into a free service called Branch. Check it out at http://branch.io
No, there is no such thing on iOS. But you can and should file a feature request at bugreport.apple.com, if you really need this feature.
As of iOS6, if someone installs your applications via a smart banner, you can pass a url to your app on startup. You do this by using the app-argument parameter:
A URL that provides context to your native app. If you include this, and the user has your app installed, she can jump from your website to the corresponding position in your iOS app. Typically, it is beneficial to retain navigational context because:
It should work on install:
When the app finishes downloading [after clicking install on an app banner], the View button changes to an Open button, and tapping the banner will open the app while preserving the user’s context from your website.
More here: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/PromotingAppswithAppBanners/PromotingAppswithAppBanners.html
I think this will work (but the jury is still out: Does app-argument on Apple Smart Banner get passed to app on install? ), but testing this is tough: How to test Smart App Banner Urls on in Dev environment
No, AppStore doesn't pass any parameters to application - it just unzips ipa to application folder (container).
This link shows a video where an app upgrade is "forced" from within the app itself:
http://buzzworks.de/blog/update-ios-beta-apps-from-within-the-app
The App Store is not called in and it's said to work only for AdHoc
apps.
Anyone knows how is this possible?
edit: please give a look to the video before answering. AdHoc apps are signed by the developer and they do not come from the App Store. This sort of forced update is useful when doing beta testing and in enterprise applications.
I've found that it's all explained here:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/featuredarticles/FA_Wireless_Enterprise_App_Distribution/Introduction/Introduction.html
The developer should create an .ipa with the app and a manifest in plist format with the URL to the .ipa and a few other things.
The app can optionally implement its own way to find if an update is available and open
the URL to the manifest.
I didn't it's really possible because the app has to somehow sign itself. The best I can think of right now is that the app is not signed?
You can always force people to go to the app store when a new version is out. Simply make the app connect to a webservice first. Other solutions are not accepted by Apple, or will quite simply not work because of other issues (signing is one of many).
You could also design your app in such a way that forced updates are never a requirement. You can load your user interfaces from the web (Apple has presented some valuable information about that during the previous WWDC), your data can come from the web, and if there is any other correction to do just ensure your app is backwards compatible.
That's how the app store works. And it never requires a 'forced update' ... Well, almost never ;-)