AppStore

From APIDesign

Revision as of 07:53, 14 August 2014

Yeah, it takes $99 to get permission to publish iOS applications to AppStore. It required just $25 to publish to GooglePlay. I managed to pay those $25 bucks and publish the app in one day. Will I succeed with AppStore as fast or will it take weeks?

Preparing first Upload

This is the source of information I am going to follow - Ping example: http://asipofjava.blogspot.be/2014/05/pong-aka-retro-game-i-available-in-app.html

I followed the steps, downloaded distribution profile, but then it took a long time to find out where the profile is and what is its name. It is in /Users/<username>/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles, thus I could put

tests-MacBook-Pro:minesweeper jarda$ hg diff
diff -r 77670cba08c3 minesweeper/pom.xml
--- a/minesweeper/pom.xml	Sat Jul 26 11:15:18 2014 +0200
+++ b/minesweeper/pom.xml	Sun Jul 27 07:17:58 2014 +0200
@@ -532,7 +532,7 @@
                   <plugin>
                       <groupId>org.robovm</groupId>
                       <artifactId>robovm-maven-plugin</artifactId>
-                      <version>0.0.13.1</version>
+                      <version>0.0.14.1</version>
                       <configuration>
                           <config>
                               <mainClass>org.apidesign.demo.minesweeper.Main</mainClass>
@@ -563,6 +563,9 @@
                               </resources>
                           </config>
                           <includeJFX>false</includeJFX>
+        <iosSignIdentity>iPhone Distribution</iosSignIdentity>
+        <iosProvisioningProfile>E4B14DB7-81F1-4C9D-A3BE-65F86F32027F</iosProvisioningProfile>
+

into my pom file. Something has been generated, but application loader rejects the upload with

ERROR ITMS-9000: "Invalid Provisioning Profile. The provisioning profile included in the bundle org.apidesign.demo.minesweeper.Main [Payload/MineSweeper.app] is invalid. [Missing code-signing certificate.] For more information, visit the iOS Developer Portal."

Trying advice to check the list of certificates with:

$ security find-identity -v -p codesigning
  1) AAB1C4DEABD0B7FEA38F86791617D8EBFC9FB5C7 "iPhone Developer: Jaroslav Tulach (62CX47PZM2)"
  2) 92FF34782870A830C53567290732329E3EED53DC66 "iPhone Distribution: Jaroslav Tulach (8VI366L5Y4)"
     2 valid identities found

I had to remove an automatically generated distribution provisioning profile, obtain new one. Then I was able to upload the app and send it to verification. To pass the verification I had to include Info.plist.xml as suggested in the Ping example.

1st Review

I was waiting for 1st review more than fourteen days. It turned out to be my mistake. After waiting more than a week I got a feeling something is wrong and uploaded new version of MineSweeper - never do anything like that - that starts the review process from scratch. If you want to get Apple's feedback, just wait patiently.

But the nice thing is that the Apple's review team is responsive and polite. When I sent them email asking what's going on? they quickly and politely replied in three paragraph email which content could be condensed into just wait advice.

Being patient paid off: today morning I found result of the review: rejected. It seems there were three areas of complaints:

2.9: Apps that are "beta", "demo", "trial", or "test" versions will be rejected

I guess it was complain about Payload/MineSweeper.app/pages/android_logo.jpg and its use on the application welcome screen. I placed the reference to DlvkBrwsr to demonstrate that one can write the application once and package it for various platforms. However I understand that Apple doesn't want to promote Android, so I will remove the JPG file and modify the welcome screen to not reference it. I assume other icons (like NetBeans) are OK, and I plan keep them in.

3.1: Apps or metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected

I used word "demo" while meaning something like "showcase". The Fair MineSweeper game is fully featured, it is not beta or demo by itself. What I wanted to say is that it is "showcase" for the underlying technology which allows people to write applications once and package them for multiple platforms. I'll replace the use of word "demo" with "showcase", OK?

3.2: Apps with placeholder text will be rejected

I don't understand what you mean by placeholder text. The attached screen shot shows the whole welcome screen without identifying the problematic parts. I used the best bootstrap.css design practices to create the welcome page and as far as I can tell, it contains valid (and definitely not placeholder) information. You can be more specific and tell me what sentence was classified as placeholder text. Meanwhile I do redesign of the page to conform to 3.1 and 2.9 and we'll see if it is found appropriate next time.