I was wondering if anyone has any experience with uploading applications.
At the moment we have an application without any leaks, and how hard we even try to create a crash, in both the simulator and the actual device it just wont let us crash it.
Now we're curious if there are any other developers out there that has been in the same situation and sent their applications to the app store and what the actual outcome was. As we're very cautious and dont want to waste our company's resources we'd like to get as much feedback as possible and cover everything before submitting to the app store.
Please feel free to share.
Thanks in advance!
Ensure you don't use any undocumented API's immediate fail.
Follow the Apple criteria and make sure your app fits their restrictions....
Check my post App Store Approval which contains a link to the criteria....
Good work having a thoroughly tested app and I admire your desire to ensure your submission is pain-free. Good luck!
If it does want you want, and you are happy with the amount of testing you've put in it..and it follows Apple's app store guidelines, I'd say its ready for the app store. Quite a large number of apps have huge glaring bugs, so if yours never crashes (doubt this), you are one of the very few.
Also, the process only takes about a week, so I wouldn't say its the end of the world if it somehow gets rejected or you find a bug later.
You can create an ad hoc build and send the application to some iPhone users and ask them for feedback on application. And if app crashes just get the application logs from itunes.
Apart from running a private beta or adding a crash reporter, there isn't much more to do than checking the App Store Review Guidelines and send your first version.
One issue I ran into is that the plural of a word counts as a whole different keyword. Example, looking up snippet won't return applications tagged snippets so be sure to include both of them.
Related
I'm a newbie. I've worked out all the bugs I can find in my app, but before I find beta testers and ultimately submit to the app store, I want to make sure I don't leave out any important steps. For example, I see several questions talking about checking for memory leaks, but I don't really know what that is or how to do it; same thing with the sandbox. I've already created a signing certificate and a provisioning profile and registered my device.
So: assuming that my code is all working, what else should I do or check for?
(If this isn't an appropriate stackoverflow.com question, I apologize; please let me know, and I'll remove it asap.)
Definitely check for leaks.
Leaks are where your app doesn't give up memory to the system after it has finished using it. This can mean (a) Your app uses more memory than it needs to and (2) the device runs out of memory if your app runs for a long time, and your app can crash and other apps will be closed.
Here's a guide to finding leaks, using a tool called Instruments that comes with Xcode.
http://mobileorchard.com/find-iphone-memory-leaks-a-leaks-tool-tutorial/
Also make sure you write 'review notes' for the reviewer if there's any aspect of your app that won't be immediately obvious. If you need a login to use the app, make sure you provide a test one in the review notes. Consider making a (private?) YouTube video showing the app in action.
I'm getting ready to submit an App that relies on the user being at specific locations to watch a video. (Kind of a mashup of geocaching and youtube.) Needless to say none of these videos are anyway near Apples headquarters. So how will the App store review people be able to properly review the App? Do I have to provide test data in their vicinity or can I instruct them to fake their geolocation to a location that works?
I guess the best way is to just submit it once, wait ~7 days and see what they have to say,
but since they have special toolchains to test apps, it shouldn't be a problem.
Just make sure to mention it in the review notes.
I've submitted an update to an app once that requires an user and password to login, and gave them a test user. When I checked the server logs, they never logged in once - but the app was still approved.
The iOS Simulator can 'fake' its location :) Though I doubt what they DO review in their process, because once they accepted one of my Apps' update which crashed upon launch...
Recently had to deal with this myself... submitted a location specific app without any extra review notes, and the app got rejected. In the rejection notice I was given the instruction to create a video of the app in action and then provide a link in the review notes.
So I used another iPhone to take the video, put some basic explanation text in the video using iMovie, uploaded to YouTube, put the link in the reviewers notes, re-submitted the app and then 5 or so days later it was approved.
As I understand, they review team does NOT test the usability nor stability of your app during app reviewing. All you need to do, is to provide an testing account, and some sample data, screenshots to them helping understand how your app works. If the app does not show any data because of a reasonable circumstance, it's not the problem of your app quality nor user usage, but data coverage. So you won't have problem with it.
A user is reporting a crash in my app but I can't seem to recreate it and have not heard of this crash from any other users. He claims the app crashes when he comes back to it after using different apps. There are no crash reports on iTunes connect either and hes using the latest device and os.
Have the user follow the directions here:
http://www.ispeeddial.com/how-to-find-the-crash-log-for-an-iphone-application/
You should not worried about it much. There are many SDk around which allow user to submit there bugs/feedback direct to developer rather than on itune store. There may be several reason either he/she put down your app(marketing strategy). But the nicer solution is i can tell you that somehow may depend of your code may be related the memory leak. If you are confident with your coding standard then finally you should not worry about until unless many people does not complain about it
I'm wondering if there are some ways to check if my application is hacked?
I mean, I don't really want to prevent my application from hacking, but I would like to list all iPhone (UUID) that use my hacked application.
Check out mtiks. They do free piracy monitoring, but you'll have to re-release your app to the appstore. If you don't have anything setup currently, you're not going to be able to tell who's using it.
Check to see if encryption was removed from you app bundle or any other changes were made.
If you don't prevent your app from being cracked by any different behavior, such as not working, this makes your detection code much harder to find.
I am going to ask users on public forums to take part in my app beta testing using ad-hoc method. So if user interested in testing/reviewing he sends me UUID and I send him app binary.
The main question: is it safe to give anyone app binary file? I heard some terrible stories on Apple iphone developer forums that some guy found his app published someone else using another company name and different icon. So the app was absolutely the same except company name and graphics. He told that someone else got his app binary, cracked it and post it on appstore for profit.
So is it possible to steal my app and publish it on appstore if I give my app binary using ad-hoc?
thx
Yes, as it is possible for the same to occur for apps that are in the app store.
There are tools that can unpack the signed binaries which can then be repacked.
In the same light, someone could crack Visual Studio to show a different company name and then release it as their own.
In both cases, there are serious legal ramifications, and in both cases it is actually very rare to occur.
In the case of iPhone apps, it is very unlikely someone would want to bother stealing your app. If you really think there is a risk, I wouldn't recommend sending ad-hoc copies to random people you don't know.
While it is technically possible, (IANAL) I believe such an act is a violation of the DMCA, giving you legal ground to go after them, any and all profits they make off of what they stole, etc.
If you feel that threatened, you can add an "expiration system" to your app. Check if the date is later that, say November 2009 and kill it. I don't think someone will go into the trouble of removing your code signing, signing it with his own identity after he has cracked the expiration failsafe. You app should be pretty awesome.
I've never heard of code that can't be decompiled/disassembled. I guess this applies to iPhone as well. So yes.
Yes, technically they can take the binary and resign it using their keys. They could do that either to install it on their device, or submit it to the store.
They won't have the source, so making any sort of fixes or changes (including to deal with a submission rejection) would be remarkably difficult, and it should not be to hard to prove a copyright violation and get it taken down (though you might need to pay some lawyers).
At the end of the day I wouldn't worry about it... this sort of thing just doesn't happen in practice.