I submitted an update for one of my iPhone apps last week and just realized I forgot to change the bundle version in Info.plist before I submitted. The update fixes a critical bug, so I want to get it into the store as soon as possible. The app update has not been approved yet. I am debating on replacing the binary with the updated bundle version or leave it.
What are the consequences of leaving the bundle version the same as the previous version of the app?
Apple may not accept the update as the bundle version is the same as what is currently on the app store
If it gets through Apple, iTunes will not automatically download or synchronize to the phone (you can see this behaviour using an ad-hoc distribution)
I'm surprised it even got through. I forgot to do that once, and itunes connect wouldn't accept my binary. I'd say you should leave it as it is, since you probably did change the bundle version in itunes connect, when you were uploading the binary, and so it should all work out. I'm not exactly sure though, cause I'm surprised it is even possible.
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I have been working on an iOS app update and am ready to submit it, however I am having a small issue I am concerned about. I create an ad-Hoc version for testing and when I try to synch the update over to my phone via iTunes it won't give me the 'update' option next to the app. The buttons in iTunes says 'remove'. iTunes actually forces me to first remove the old version of the app and only after it is removed, iTunes gives me the option to install the new version and then the app works fine. The only problem is that this is not really testing the update process and I am concerned that once I release the app to the app store my users will have the same issue where they will not be able to just update the app, they will have to remove the old app first and then install the new version. Any idea what might be going wrong here?
iOS takes care of updating Apps, as far as bundle identifier in your info-plist is the same, any newer version will show as an update in iOS. But in iTunes things work differently. You don't have to worry about these things.
If you want to test effects of updating an App, Install the old version from AppStore. Connect your device and Run the project from Xcode. Now this will work the same way as updating your app.
There is no problem from your part. Maybe this time iTunes is not smart enough to know that your ad-hoc version is an update one or maybe the version of the app on iTunes and on your phone is the same. I've made a lot of update to my apps, when you submit a new one to AppStore your user won't face this problem. They will find an update button for your app :).
We have submitted an update version of our existing applications in the App Store recently. But we have received a issue from one of the users, saying that the app is not functioning properly after the update. So in order to replicate the same, what are the steps to reproduce, so that i can analyse the issue?
Any help will be appreciated.
To simulate this before pushing yoru updated version to the AppStore you can:
Download the old version of your app from the appstore
Run the updated version of your app from XCode on the same device.
What will happen behind the scenes is that your app will be updated in a way similar to the Appstore. Your app will be partially updated while your doucments folder will stay the same. (what usually causes problems)
This solution is better because it lets you check for problems before and update was pushed to the Appstore.
Yeah, I get this a lot. The solution is a bit annoying, but you need to keep a history of IPAs you've submitted so you can put the on your phone through iTunes (so not the simulator) and then, run your code on your device putting a breakpoint on your applicationDidFinishLaunching handler in your app delegate, and start tracing from there. You should be able to find the old app store version in your organiser from the last time you submitted, or, go through your SVN/GIT history and checkout the version tagged to your release version.
Many times in the past that has happened to me where I test a new revision and everything looks fine but when I submit an update and is approved, users start complaining about a crash or lost data.
This is way I approach the problem.
(This is most important step) You need to either have your old code or old binary installed on your actual apple device. (Physical iPhone / iPad)
Now go to iTunes and install your new update.
Attach your physical iPhone / iPad to you computer, Launch Xcode and start debugging it.
NOTE: There have been many times when things work perfectly in the Simulator but break on the actual device. Its always important to test your code on the real thing as that is what the users are going to be on.
All that is required is to have the version of the app that is in the app store on your device, then install the updated version to your device. You can debug it using Xcode when you install the new version.
After making an update to an iPad app I released some time ago, I've been getting reports that people are unable to actually update the app without deleting and re-installing. However, as far as I know, nothing in the update should be causing this. (All the update deals with is letting people email PDF documents, nothing major.) When people attempt to update, they're asked for their iTunes password, but after entering it, it merely goes back to the update screen and nothing happens. Additionally, it would seem that this only happens with my app, the people in question aren't having any issues with the other various apps on the App Store. Does anyone know what might be causing this and how I could fix it?
Thanks in advance!
(Also, if it matters, the app is a custom B2B app, the general public can't purchase it.)
I'm removing the text of my answer because it's so inaccurate it's embarrassing. I mistook "B2B" for "Enterprise" and answered based off of that. To make up for it, I'll look into the problem a bit more and if I find anything I will edit this answer accordingly.
Edit:
Okay, I can see why you put a bounty for this question on SO; there's not really any data on a problem like this anywhere. Frankly, there's not much available information on B2B in general. I'll post what I found anyway, in case it can be of any help to you.
I found the details reason behind Maggie's question, there. Per Editing and Updating App Information:
Updates keep the same Apple ID and bundle ID, which means they are
associated with your first version and free to your customers
Also, apparently, "You can't change the CFBundleIdentifier of a released app if you want to release updates for it, the App Store will automatically reject it when you upload." which is something I can vouch for, having experienced this with a normal app. I do know that for a B2B app you do have to submit it to Apple for review, but I can't tell from the documentation I found if you need to actually submit it to the App Store, so it may not go through the various checks that normal apps go through, so this could be your problem.
Aside from that, according to the VPP guide, if your customers are installing the apps on the devices with Apple Configurator (broken right now, per app store reviews) the updates also have to be done with the Configurator. You haven't said that Configurator was involved, but I did find this tidbit.
• Use Apple Configurator to install apps on new or supervised devices.
Apple Configurator on a Mac makes it easy to mass configure and deploy
devices that are centrally controlled. Redemption code spreadsheets
acquired through the Volume Purchase Program can be imported by Apple
Configurator, tracking the number of apps installed on each device. To
update deployed apps using Apple Configurator, you must reconnect to
the same Mac from which the apps were installed. Learn more at
itunes.apple.com/us/app/apple-configurator
Anyway, good luck. Wish I could be more help.
What you are describing (assuming that it is accurate) would certainly be a bug on Apple's side. If users are trying to update the app and the update is not being processed, then in one way or another that is a bug that Apple needs to address. Nothing that you do as a developer should be able to cause that situation to happen. I would suggest contacting Apple and possibly filing a bug report.
It seems that apple wants you to develop the Iphone apps in the latest build. Sometimes this cause issues between realeases (diferent versions of Itunes, OSX, IOS, etc) when you try to update your apps.
Try to publish the app in the latest version of xcode.
That happens a lot in iphone development testing.
Hope this help.
When updating an app, iOS looks for the bundleId and if there is another app with the same bundleId, it updates the app with the highest version number. Maybe the version number is not set correctly or maybe people have issues because an other app (from the AppStore or an other B2B app) have the same bundleID but a higher version number.
I'm by far not an iPhone expert, but it seems something related might have been fixed in iOS 6.0.1.
Fixes a bug that prevents iPhone 5 from installing software updates
wirelessly over the air
We have not been able to publish our first update to our iPhone app on the app store.
The validate step after build always fails with:
"This bundle is invalid. The bundle identifier cannot be changed from the previous version. If you want to change your bundle identifier you will need to create a new application in itunes connect."
We have only one Apple account with only one app. We have not changed the bundle id in the plist file ever since we released earlier in the summer (it was different before we released though). it is "com.company.product" (with our real company name and real product name all in lowercase). We only increased the version number from 1.0 to 1.10 (after seeing articles here with problems going to 1.1)
The iTunes connect is expecting 1.10 and the same bundle id. Spent 2 days Googling but can't find anything useful and tried different versions and bundle ids etc but nothing was good.
Please help!
(I have also sent an itunes connect question on this to Apple but no response so far)
I got this error before, I'm not sure however if you have done the same thing I did:
In versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 of my app, it only supported iPhone. I then got an iPad of my own for testing. In version 1.3 of my app, I updated it to support iPhone and iPad. It wouldn't upload, giving me this error. Turns out if you want a universal app, it has to be universal from the start, you cant decide in version 1.4 or whatever that you want to add iPad compatibility.
I have an application already on the store and would like to release an update. Since my app deals with databases and I've had to change some parts of it, I would like to ensure that the update does not affect the existing functionality in any way once the user updates from the App Store.
What I did was this - install the first version of my app on my device. Changed the update's version in info.plist to 1.1 and run it via xcode (and install on my device). But what happens by doing this is some of the changes I made to the XIBs do not show up. It looks as if the app was only half-updated (if you know what I mean)
Is there any way to update an existing app programmatically without having to go through the app store and then find out it could lead to a disaster?!
Thanks for any help!
I would double check your build configuration. Between building the two versions of the app, I would recommend a "Clean All" just to be safe. The process you described works to verify updates. The only other alternative I can come up with is to create Ad-hoc distributions of both versions of your app, and install those.