My last post mentioned that the Apple iPhone review process seems to be undertaking a new direction to keep developers/companies in touch with where they stand.
I recently found that an update of mine to Deal or Not, and a new game Twist ‘n Tilt are now “In Review”, whilst my other two updates are still in “Waiting For Review”.
This is a great step forward I feel, as I am better prepared with ramping up the marketing around the release.
We recently submitted an update to Deal or Not, and Keepin’ Score, along with a new game Twist ‘n Tilt and we found that iTunesConnect now shows a new status of “Waiting For Review“.
There always seemed to be a black hole when an app was submitted for review. It stayed “In Review” for what seems to be eternity for new iPhone developers.
Here’s hoping that this new status of “Waiting For Review” changes to “In Review” when someone is actually reviewing your app(s).
I hadn’t experienced this error before, but became aware of this when a workmate started getting it the other day on his up-and-coming app. I tried helping him out just before I was leaving for work but couldn’t stick around log enough to assist.
I got a text saying he’d fixed it, but I’m not sure what it was he did to fix it. He had tried a few things but as we’ve all experienced changing so many things we’re never sure what fixed the problem.
Just this morning, it came to deploying my iPhone app Deal or Not to our iPod touch 1stgen and then I started getting the error.
After researching a bit, I dug around in my general settings on the device. I came across this blog entry and was relunctant to implement the suggested solution.
One of the comments mentioned expired provisioning profiles but I was certain my Dev provisioning profile was fine but what I did find is that another provisioning profile (one for work) had expired.
I deleted this one (even though it wasn’t the one being used as far as I was concerned) and the app then deployed fine.
After posting the entry how to build an ipa, we found that it would work fine when the application you’re installing is already on the device. ie: either built with a regular provision from XCode, or downloaded from the App Store.
However, when you’re sending your app to beta testers that have never had your app in iTunes let alone on their device, the application would launch and then crash.
Many attempts, and re-attempts were made during the enhancement of this build script, but the findings can be easily summarized as:
These corrections are now available in v1.1 of the script, which can be found here. Download ant build script to build .ipa file
Since the pre-release of our first business application Partae, we’d been manually installing the beta software onto our tester’s devices the old fashioned way; adding their device ID to our development provisioning profile and installing with cable.
After having the opportunity to beta test for another independent developer for their game Dead Panic we found there was an easier way to get your software onto your tester’s devices. The easier way is of course supplying a .ipa file and your .mobileprovision file to add to iTunes.
We successfully did this many times leading up to the release of Deal or Not which proved to work well, however it came with a couple of drawbacks.
Instead, we focussed our efforts on putting a simple (yet effective) build script together that would do remedy the above mentioned issues. Since to develop for an iPhone you need a Macintosh, you’ll also have ant already installed.
Here’s our ant script which builds in 1 second, and has you ready to provide to your testers in no time at all.
Simply:
We’ve started blogging to document our findings.
If you haven’t already, download Deal or Not from the App Store
Yianni Software's Blog 