I havent seen many posts here regarding the xbox live api offered by Microsoft. Can anyone point me a a site where there is an active xbox live api community?
This is rather vague so I will provide a broad answer.
ID#Xbox
If you're an independent publisher looking to implement Xbox Live Services into your game sign-up with ID#Xbox (https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/id). There you will be given access to developer forums and thorough documentation. Official and full of knowledgeable people.
Creators Program
If you're creating an app for the Xbox One marketplace or Windows 10 you can join the Xbox Live Creators Program (https://www.xbox.com/developers/creators-program). This is much more streamlined than ID#Xbox and has less verification steps. It's a quick way to integrate Xbox Live with whatever you are doing.
Documentation
For complete documentation on the Xbox Live API visit (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/xbox-live/) which is assuming you already have the necessary access through either ID#Xbox or the Creators Program.
The aforementioned avenues are the official way to tap in and join the community.
Other Options
Above all else, if you're simply looking to integrate Xbox Live into your website or something simple - Microsoft isn't interested. There is no official support for that unless you're one of the above partners. However - there remain options.
1) OpenXBL (https://xbl.io) offers up support for Xbox Live API calls and sign-in authentication. Plenty of demo projects to get you going. There is also a Discord channel available to chat with others using the service.
2) https://xboxapi.com also offers up support for Xbox Live API calls.
I am close to going to market with my app but, I am struggling a little with pricing. I think the best pricing scenario would be similar to the netflix model e.g. You get the first month free after you enter your credit card. You then have to unsubcribe to cancel the subscription.
However, I have been researching how to do this for an iPhone app being distributed through the appstore and it seems difficult to set up. You need to have your own server and the customer needs to sign up through your website. This sounds very complicated to set up and frankly I would rather get the product to market as soon as possible.
Does anyone know of an easier way to set up a netflix style payment model? I was going to use the appstore promo codes and give them out to my target market instead, but it seems like they are only available in the US. I am based in the EU.
How can I offer my app for free for a month or so to build up a user base before starting to charge for it?
Any help you could give me on this would be greatly appreciated.
I heard a lot about apples new transit api. Im wanting to integrate this into my app. I basically want to find the geolocation information of transit information within the proximity of the user.
Does anyone know if this is possible? Or is it for a totally different purpose?
Thanks
This is an iOS 6 api, which is in beta - therefore you & we cannot discuss it in a public forum, it contravenes your NDA as an Apple Developer.
You can ask Apple themselves, however - through their support channels.
Apologies in advance for a policy, rather than a programming question, but given the paucity of information available online I hope I can be forgiven for asking it here.
I would like to use the new recurring subscriptions from Apple in an iOS app. I have coded payments before and have no problems there, however nowhere can I find guidance on what is allowed under the new subscription type. The implication 'seems' to be that there is no special guidance, however all the discussions I can find are talking about 'content' providers rather than service providers.
I would like to use the recurring subscription for a service that people subscribe to. I am not offering any content per se.
Using the old non-renewing subscription type (that is really so broken it isn't worth using) I'm 99% sure the app would be accepted, but all the talk of content providers has me worried that Apple really don't want SAAS providers to use the recurring subscription model and want to restrict it to publishers of content.
Does anyone have experience with using the new payment model for software as a service?
I'd love to get some better idea as to whether it's viable or not before we build a whole payment solution around the concept!
I am sorry that i am coming into this a little late, but i have an answer for this.
Basically about a month ago i submitted my app and it got rejected for not including iAP as it links to our SAAS website for users to set up their subscriptions. So off i went and implemented Auto-Renwing subscriptions. didn't take me too long and from testing worked fine. So i resubmitted. and got rejected again.
We found that the Purchasability Type for one or more of your In-App Purchase products was inappropriately set, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
Cloud-books is set to Auto-Renew Subscription.
Based on product functionality, it would be more appropriate to use the non-renewing subscription In-App Purchase type. The Auto-Renewable Subscription product is best suited for apps that require or feature dynamically or frequently changing content, such as digital periodicals or radio subscriptions.
Even though when creating an iAP product there is a nice little line that says this:
Non-renewing subscriptions can still be offered, but auto-renewable subscriptions are now preferred for the following reasons:
So from my experience auto renewing is NOT allowed for SAAS.
I think the policy around auto-renewing subscriptions on iOS may have changed recently, but it's tough because there's still a lot of older information and testimonials from developers out there. Marco Arment's blog talks a lot about the policy here and here, but those are from 2012 and 2013
As of now (mid-2014), from what I've been able to gather, the relevant policy has changed from this:
"Apps that use IAP to purchase items must assign the correct
Purchasability type Appler In-App Purchase is currently an
Auto-Renewable Subscription. However, it would be more appropriate to
use the Non-Renewing Subscription In-App Purchase type. Auto-Renewable
Subscriptions are intended for periodical apps, such as magazines and
newspapers."
to this:
Apps may only use auto-renewing subscriptions for periodicals
(newspapers, magazines), business Apps (enterprise, productivity,
professional creative, cloud storage), and media Apps (video, audio,
voice), or the App will be rejected.
So it seems like an older restriction that was mostly focused on periodicals has now been expanded to a bunch of other use cases. There are a number of public examples of apps like Evernote that have switched to auto-renewals.
Source: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
If I understand your question, you are offering "another month of this service" as a subscription item. This would be a common model for subscription-based games, etc. Probably your best indication of whether or not it is allowed is to look for other apps that do it.
In addition, don't be afraid to contact Apple! They're not monsters, and they do answer questions! You can email tech support or, if that doesn't get you a helpful response, ask to talk with one of Apple's iOS biz-dev managers. They have people whose job it is to help you make your business succeed. If they don't know the answer, they'll find it; if the answer is "no", they'll help you figure out ways to do something similar. They're quite friendly & knowledgable, like a genius bar dedicated to the iOS app business.
Let us know what you learn!
As I mention in my comment to #Joe Meredith's response, I received a similar rejection. Although I thought that this was due to an unwritten rule, I just noticed that this Hacker News commenter found a written rule that explicitly states that
Apps containing "rental" content or services that expire after a
limited time will be rejected
As for 2019, things have changed a little bit. Apple now do allow the usage of the SaaS model with IAP Auto Renewable Subscriptions:
Permissible uses: If you offer an auto-renewing subscription, you must
provide ongoing value to the customer, and the subscription period
must last at least seven days and be available across all of the
user’s devices. While the following list is not exhaustive, examples
of appropriate subscriptions include: new game levels; episodic
content; multi-player support; apps that offer consistent, substantive
updates; access to large collections of, or continually updated, media
content; software as a service (“SAAS”); and cloud support. In
addition:
I am a complete novice and have no technical skills and little knowledge concerning iphone app development an in-app / itunes store purchases.
But I have been playing with some ideas for my coffeeshop / lunchbar and was wondering If any experts would like to give me some feedback on my ideas.
As I said I run a coffee and lunch(break) shop and allot of my customers are iphone (and blackberry) users. What also happens alot is that the customers ring to order their coffee and food so that they don't have to wait (and waist their precious lunch time).
I myself am an Iphone user and really like the way it works (most of the time).
So I was wondering I is possible or will it be possible to develop an iphone app for my customers and have them pay for the order "in-app". I get a bill of the order in my mailbox and they just chout their name and thats it !?
Might sound a bit low tech but if apple have someones creditcard details and a mobile ordering display then they could function as a cash register of bank ?
thanks,
Jonathan
You can't do this according to Apple's terms of use:
You must deliver your digital good or service within your app.
Do not use In App Purchase to sell real-world goods and services.
Even if allowed, you'd lose 30% of your revenue to Apple using in-app purchase.
There are point-of-sale apps for iPhone that allow you to swipe credit cards. One of the Twitter founders has a startup called Square that'll be doing this. If you wanted it to be an app that users could install themselves, though, you'd likely be best off doing a custom one and hitting a payment gateway in the backend (Chipotle's app is a good example of this).
The original asker is just asking if this is possible, which it is! If you don't take the term 'in-app purchasing' literally. Just use paypal or some other payment method through the app. Ebay does this and so can you.
As long as you aren't selling something that competes directly with Apple (like Sony's digital book store that got shut down) you should be fine using a payment method other than the built-in functionality called 'in app purchasing'.
You have a good idea on your hands and it should be possible to find a way to take customer's money through the app.
Though you could probably use In-App purchasing for this, you would have some interesting work to do to make it work smoothly. You would probably be better off developing your own shopping cart application that lets your customers order "online" and write a custom iPhone application for them - skipping Apple for the purchase of coffee and donuts...
-t