We received the following email for our new app submitted a week ago. Got a few questions: Anyone know what the "information needed" part means? Does this send us to the back of the queue - once we submit the requested data?
===============================
Hello ,
Thank you for submitting DG to the App
Store.
We've completed the review of your
app, but cannot post this version to
the App Store because it did not
comply with the App Store Review
Guidelines, as detailed below:
3.4: App names in iTunes Connect and as displayed on a device should be
similar, so as not to cause confusion
Information Needed
To reply to this message or to get
more information, visit the Resolution
Center in iTunes Connect. Do not reply
directly to this email.
Regards,
App Review
Yes - you go back to the queue (and also need to upload a new version).
I'm not sure regarding the "Information needed" but does your app require a login? If so, have you gave them a login name + password to use?
Apple won't really say if they checked everything, but I did encounter situations in the past where I was rejected about stuff like "keywords" and the whole process again took the usual amount of time. There were also cases where my update got approved in 2 hrs. after submission, so just hope for the best and keep calm, there's nothing more you can do.
Visit the Resolution Center in iTunes Connect. That is the best way to get in contact with them. You get there from the screen in iTunes Connect where you filled out the metadata before you submitted the app for review.
Related
I got my application approved on app store.
But due to some change in the feed I am using my app is crashing now. What am I supposed to do now?
Giving an update will take 7 days for apple to approve and I will get bad reviews if any one downloads it in between.
What am I supposed to do now?
You could:
Fix the feed.
Remove the app from sale until you fixed the bug and the update is approved.
Remove the app from sale until you fixed the bug and the update is approved and request a speedy review.
To remove a App from sale, go to the Rights and Pricing of that app in iTunnesConnect and set the Availability Date in the future. this will remove the app from sale. Just put the date back to now to make it available again.
You can ask for an expedited review (http://developer.apple.com/appstore/contact/appreviewteam/), if you haven't abused of it yet and have real reasons (as it seems) to ask for it, they will review your App in between 1 and 3 days... :)
If you want to stop selling your App while it is happening, you can go to the Pricing menu in iTunes Connect and remove all the countries available...
You need to submit an expedited review request. From my personal experience I've generally pushed these out within 24 hours. Usually Apple does these as a one time exception, and is supposed to be used once in a great while. I've done 4 total in 2 years. Anyhow, since there is contact information on the website, if users download and contact you reply back that there are pending updates, and will be out shortly.
You could go through pausing delivery of app until ready, etc, etc. Availability can be changed and automated via dates. You can remove from countries available.
Here is link for expedited review. You'll need your App ID and Name, etc.
http://developer.apple.com/appstore/contact/appreviewteam/
I have been stuck in a strange situation, according to my requirement, I need to track the resellers of my app, i.e. I will be publishing link of my app in the iTunes-Store on 3 or more different sites(The re seller's sites).
According to my promise which I made to these resellers, I will provide a share of my profit.
So here I have to track from which link did the user came to the APP-Store.
Any suggestions or solutions will be Thankful.
I think the only way to do it will be server-side. Links at your resellers should point to your server, where you log the source of link (resellers web page) and redirect request to AppStore. But you'll have no way of knowing, which of this requests ended up with a purchase.
The only way to do this for real is to get them to become iTunes affiliates and provide reports back to you. They should use the iTunes referral to make the sale (they will get a small cut from Apple) -- Apple will report that back to them, and then they can prove to you that they made a sale, and then you pay based on that.
Reserve the right to audit them -- meaning that they will have to show you the report directly from the iTunes affiliate site.
I assume that iTunes actually tells them what they sold, but you would need to check that.
Another idea (which may or may not make sense based on what your app does) is to make personalized versions of your app for each reseller. If there's some way to incorporate a very simple feature that is personalized (and makes sense), then you can upload the same app multiple times and assume all sales are coming from that reseller.
So, for example, if the app were an exercise tracker, and the resellers were gyms -- you could customize the app for each gym and add their schedule and contact info to it. Then, sell the app as an Excerise Tracker for XYZ Gym and let them promote it and get a cut of sales.
I uploaded one of my app before couple of weeks and it is available on the App store now. It has 2 In- app purchase. In app purchase logic is totally from remote server as we wanted to add new pack without updating binary file so we did everything on server side.
So, here is my actual question. Now I want to add new pack. so here is my confusion/question.
I made on inventory.xml file for all the In app purchase id for validating in app id. and I am displaying only those Items which are valid from App store.
Also, when user purchase any pack I am downloading contents from the server and they will have new pack after successful purchase.
So, how do I make it available to Apple for submission purposes without also making it available to the general public? That is, if I add the new pack to the inventory.xml file which lists all the packs, everyone will be able to see it before Apple even approves it. But if I don't add the new pack to inventory.xml, then Apple will have nothing to look at in order to approve it.
Thanks in Advance.
When you submit new in-app purchases to Apple, you upload screenshots and descriptions of the new content to iTunes Connect. That should be all they need for review, and you can wait to update your inventory.xml file until they have approved the new content.
I found answer for this question from other sources. So I am posting it here what I have found and I believe that is the correct answer. This is my opinion it may be wrong..
So, in my situation I can add new item in my inventory.xml file as well as in iTunes account and put it new item for the review.
The reason why General public (users) will not see my new pack because I have only show valid products which I got from SKProductResponse. So in the review process it will not be valid product and it would not show in the list of available items to the users.
Now, We and Apple tester can see it because we both are using In-app test user account to test new items and I believe In-app test user account returns all the product as valid.
So, from this flow I decided to move forward with this and hopefully it should work.
OK so have a problem with the whole in-app purchase review process and hope someone can shed some light/experience on it.
We have a project which is a magazine for the ipad. Each issue requires an in-app purchase before it is downloaded. The issues are served from an XML feed when a new one is published.
The problem is, how can we have Apple review an in-app purchase without displaying the new issue. They wont be able to see it in the live binary. If we publish the issue we have to say "unavailable", which looks extremely unprofessional to the customer, until the in-app purchase is reviewed.
We dont want to have to publish a new binary each time a new issue is published as thats a pointless exercise for the customer
Thanks, any suggestions apart from change message to "coming soon" would be apprciated. The only other thought we had is a flag in the app settings which displays "unavailable issues"
If you login to your iOS developer account, you'll find this Getting Started with in App Purchase pdf file, which has information that you'll need in your setting up with your iAP item.
Specifically, I think what you need is an item belongs to the category named Subscriptions. This should solve your problem.
You can use consumable purchases, i.e. right to download 1 article. 5 purchases - 5 articles.
Or, give a user subscription for month or so.
You could always just keep some kind of "sample" issue available for the purposes of the user demoing the software.
That, or a few select pages from the active issue could be specified as "demo pages", as in they would be viewable from a demo version of the software.
Bug reported as fixed by Apple, see accepted answer below ...
UPDATE MON AUG 23rd 10:00 GMT
Although the bug report with apple hasn't been closed yet, it now seems to be working (at least for a couple of us) OK. It could be they have nailed it, or the fix is in testing, and I'll report back when (if) I hear anything more from Apple.
UPDATE FRI AUG 20th
Just to say I've had an email back from Apple Engineering (21:20 GMT) and they have said:
"Thank you for reporting this. We're aware of this issue and are currently working on a fix."
So hopefully there will soon be a resolution!
[ update to question below. There definitely seems to be a storekit sandbox issue at present. I've seen 4 or 5 other people report the same fault, but would appreciate a larger sample size! If you have a storekit implementation that you can test in the sandbox if you could report whether or not it works for you that would be much appreciated. I've logged a bug with apple as bug id#8329461 but am not sure how else to expedite this or if it is really a widespread issue. ]
I have a working iPhone storekit implementation in development. All the items for purchase are consumable, we have multiple test accounts established.
All of a sudden today, my sequence goes;
1) Request product list from Apple ... works fine (so can connect to store OK)
2) Purchase item - get "Confirm your In App Purchase" alert as normal
3) (click buy)
4a) My code gets a failed transaction with error code 2 and description "cannot connect to itunes store" via the - (void)paymentQueue:(SKPaymentQueue *)queue updatedTransactions:(NSArray *)transactions method.
[[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] finishTransaction: transaction] is being called in this situation.
4b) The user gets an alert "You've already purchased this but it hasn't been downloaded" (it has never been purchased on this device with this user account).
This is happening on different devices and with test accounts that have never been used before. I'm not aware of any changes to our code. Can anyone else confirm that the storekit test framework is working correctly for them? Is anyone else having issues today?
Any ideas as to what causes this strangeness? The message "cannot connect to itunes store" seems odd given it clearly can for retrieving product ids and watching the transaction.
NB. I also note that setting up test user accounts in the store has changed - there are now stricter password requirements etc and so I'm wondering if Apple have changed something that might be causing the issue.
TIA
Roger
PS. On a first attempt on a new device, I get the alert "unable to connect to itunes store try again later" but then what happens is that the device thinks it has already been purchased so gives the message about downloading again.
Just had a final update from Apple closing the bug.
This is a courtesy email regarding Bug ID# 8329461.
Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue:
We believe this issue is now resolved. Please let us know if you have any problems.
I've also been plagued by this problem. I had a fully functional In App Purchase working fine. I later uploaded a new binary and approved it. I made some other changes to the app, and also used a foreign "IN APP" purchase User, attempted to sign-in in Settings. Later when I tested it again, itt was no longer working. The error I got was "Unable to connect to iTunes", "Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1009". Pulled lots of hair out. I was able to fix it by signing out of iTunes account on the iPhone, "cleaning all targets", AND also signing out of iTunes on my MAC, (I closed iTunes), creating a new "local" In-App" user (necessary?). Attempted to sign into that account on my iPhone. Then it started working! Some of the above may be voodoo, but it worked. Hope this helps a few people.
I am also having the same issue. As of a couple days ago it seems. I am on iPad. Exactly the same description as Roger wrote.
Tried the Erase All Content and Settings on the iPad. Didn't work. Tried on several networks. Seemed like at first I was having a real slow connection. Took a long time to get a response from the store with the product info. As of today, I am connecting very quickly to the store but still having the same error after being notified that I have already purchased the product. Created new users, everything. No go. I've gone through all the code and it looks fine. Definitly seems to be a problem with the Sandbox side. Hope to see an update on this thread soon.
Edit
For now I am just skipping the purchase request and calling my provideContent: method when when choosing to make a purchase. Since the store is still providing me with the products, I can keep testing and working on the content providing aspect but it sure would be nice to get this working.
After announced "fix" by apple still have this trouble. It's feels like purchase transaction just falls off while test user input his credentials. But when test user is already logged in, everything is OK.
Either [SKPayment paymentWithProduct:product] nor [SKPayment paymentWithProductIdentifier:product.productIdentifier] works with logged out user in spite of products request was successful.
Does anyone have any workaround?
I've been going nuts over the same issue all morning in Lion and MacOS (not iPhone). The sandbox is not working.
I just got "An unknown error has occurred" when trying to make the purchase and a console error like this one
8/23/11 1:12:26.090 PM storeagent: promptResponse: <CKSignInPromptResponse:0x7fe1c14fb2a0 returnCode:-1>
If there is another poor soul like me out there that has been burning their brains out for hours to make this work I just found the answer: the in-app purchase sandbox is ONLY working for US test users. Other stores are not working (my test user was set to Argentina...). Create a new Test user, set it to the US store, and it will work...
I hope this helps.
For anyone having an issue similar to: "Cannot connect to iTunes Store" make sure to log out of your Apple ID in the iTunes & App Stores in settings and to try using a test account attached to your iTunes Connect account with access to your app and in app purchase