So work for a university, and we have an app that we want the students to use. It's having some trouble passing the 'Design' aspect of the Apple review. We're working on revising the design aspects, but want to use our Enterprise distribution account in the meantime to release to the campus. It's not a true enterprise app, but we want to use this distribution channel since the students are on campus already. Apple docs says:
It’s up to you to design and host the website used to distribute apps. Make sure that users are authenticated, perhaps using basic auth or directory-based authentication, and that the website is accessible via your intranet or the Internet. You can place the app and manifest in a hidden directory, or in any other location that’s readable using HTTP or HTTPS.
We want to just put this on an unsecured webpage. I'm pretty sure Apple won't mind, or even do any checks for that, but I'm wondering if anyone else has any advice or intuition for possible consequences of putting it on some unsecured web page.
thanks!
Related
Would Apple allow in-app-purchases which give access to a web app or online service? If, for example, I build a native iOS app version of an online service (say, a paid service similar to Readability, Squarespace etc.) would Apple allow me to use in-app-purchase to allow users to buy a subscription which would give users access to both iOS and web version of the service?
I'm asking this because, after initially thinking that this would be allowed, I found that https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf contains: "In-App Purchase items cannot be shared across applications or platforms." which seems to disallow this. However, in the same pdf, Apple explicitly say that services like buying VoIP minutes are allowed to be dealt with in in-app-purchases. Additionally, in the past Readability was rejected for not providing in-App-Purchases, seemingly suggesting that this is allowed.
Put simply, do Apple allow that after an in-app-purchases for an in-app-service is made, the same service access is given through a web version of the iOS app?
I think it is provided the service is consumed majorly through the iOS app itself. Subscriptions can work the way you are suggesting but only if if you also provide the same service as on the web in your app.
please excuse the beginner question but my research here shows nothing but specific programming questions.
I am currently using Wildfire app to create fb pages for contests and whatnot but don't like the WYSIWYG nature of them. I would like to be able to build pages within Facebook to have more control over their layouts and design.
Is anyone here familiar with Wildfire app and could you please explain to me how one would break away from 3rd party apps like this?
On the same note:
Without going crazy trying to create fb games deeply rooted in facebook, is it possible to build fb pages/apps such as sweepstakes, contests which may or may not post to users walls using only html/css/javascript?
Or is one forced to be a PHP developer?
If you don’t want to use 3rd party apps any more, then naturally that means creating your own apps.
You don’t necessarily need PHP or any server-side scripting language – at least most of the stuff you can do in apps can be done client-side as well. (There are only a few aspects, f.e. when publishing Open Graph actions you can specify that the publishing can only be done using the app secret – that means no one can “fake” publish an action as coming from your app, but it also requires to be done server-side, because you do not want to publish your app secret to the client. And the same for any other requests that will require your app token – you don’t want to give that away to the client either.)
But you will still need web hosting that has a valid SSL certificate. (And having your own domain as well is recommendable, because there’s always threads here about people getting user access to their apps blocked because the whole domain they are running their apps under is classified as being spammy by Facebook, even if its not their own fault.)
I searched arround for solutions and didn't find anything of really pertinent on the subject.
This is why, I ask you guys your help :-)
Assuming I have an application running with Rails 3 using Devise to authenticate the users.
I need to create mobile applications for Iphone/Android and WP7.
The mobiles applications should communicate/login/create/list, do whatever the website can do.
The mobile Applications could commuicate by parsing the XML .... but maybe there are already lib/frameworks or something more sexy ?
What would be the best way to communicate between my mobile applications and my Rails website ?
I'd use the xml or json output to share data back and forth; For authentication you can set (in initializers/devise.rb)
config.http_authenticatable = true
That enables you to send basic HTTP Auth headers with every request which devise will handle for you.
--
For creating a webapplication that is also possible to view in a mobile version for the website i'd recommend to check out this railscast: http://railscasts.com/episodes/199-mobile-devices
It sounds like, if the mobile app is just an interface to the web app, that you would likely be best served by creating a mobile HTML5 "style" within your web app, that gets served automatically when a mobile phone accesses your website. All of your code can be in Rails, which it sounds like you're already familiar with, and you've also got the advantage of keeping your codebase all together in one place - if you want to add functionality later, you just update your web app, and don't worry about updating 2 different mobile phone apps as well.
I need to create an app for a large company.
Their aim is to distribute this app to all of their customers (who themselves are companies - not individuals) and the end-user will be able to query their relevant information through this app.
The app will receive all of its data through webservices and will require login on every use.
On the one hand a web application might be suitable as all the data is anyway online and also distribution of such an app would be trivial.
On the other hand, they might want features in the long term which use the camera etc. and also the administration of the website (in addition to the existing web services) might be a problem - which means a native app working with web services is the solution.
The next question is the preferred way of distribution for this app if it is a native app.
I know Apple have the Enterprise program (which seems to have changed - I no longer see the reference to >500 employees or 250 device limit).
In my case there is one main company distributing the app to many customers so I don't know whether this program is appropriate.
Any advice would be appreciated.
I once had a similar problem... we ended up with the application in the store and an authentication mechanism inside the application. Most likely, customers would have to provide the user credential they use to authenticate at the web application to the iPhone app as well.
For the decision whether to build a native application or use a web application, I would recommend using a hybrid approach. This way you can start with an application which is based on an UIWebView and extend it with features only available to native applications...
Can two different iPhone applications share the same settings? I'm releasing two iPhone products, one that requires the user to login to use, the other that is free and can be used without a login. However, the second free application could have some enhancements that we could give if the user were logged in. Would it be possible to let a user who has both apps installed use the same settings module for the username/password we store on the device?
I don't think this is possible. I believe that each Settings module that is related to your app ID, which will be different for each app. It would be a security risk if one application could access another's settings.
I think the best solution is to use some sort of web service to store/retrieve the settings. Or you could use a custom URL scheme to pass data between the applications if you don't want to use a web service.
Natively I dont think its possible. But interfacing with an Internet Web Service, you could do it.