While Developing Elsewhere

Just a quick note that a) I've been real busy with a business iPhone app development for a startup (subcontractor work) and b) started documenting one of my recently reactivated hobby projects at jomnius.tumblr.com.

The startup project is scheduled to be released for App Store review later today (!!!) and my part of the project should be done. Ready for next project, whatever and whenever that might be.

Hobby project on the other hand is an offline book catalog browser for LibraryThing website, truly a treasure trove for all book lovers. The app is work-in-progress and not released yet.

When NOT to Release Your Application

Regardless of all "release early, release often" and "fail early, fail often" talk, there really are moments, when you SHOULD NOT RELEASE your new application.

This could be a trick question, but it's not. Just another hard lessons learned, another strike by faceless market powers. The answer is Thanksgiving, of course.

Console On Device 1.0 Now Available in App Store

I am happy to tell that second of my old three apps is finally available in App Store:

Console On Device 1.0

It's mainly a developer utility to check iOS console output within your device, without a computer. However many released apps write debug data into console, so occasional users can use it to check what's going on under the iOS hood - even whether some app really crashed or not (check "ReportCrash").

So why did I write it? Because I needed something like that in a real customer project, but couldn't find. Here's the story, without any names:

Releasing Console On Device - Lessons Learned

Trying to make my third release, an application called "Console On Device". Learned some new things - and old ones, too.

First of all, application name was already reserved. I did extensive research and tough name planning, when starting to design this app - in February 2011. Surprisingly at November 2011 someone else had already released an app with "my" name!

Lesson learned: I could have created iTunes Connect app record right away to reserve the name. However in this case luck was on my side: I found a new better name!

Rise and Fall of FontType in App Store

It's three weeks since release of FontType, my first app under my own name (actually Jomnius). It's been ... interesting times. Didn't expect big sales, but hoped to get at least a few users. Nope.

Some comments and suggestions for update. None. Bug reports. Nada. Hello, anyone there?

FontType 1.0 Now Available in App Store

After lots of sleepless nights and countless redesings I am happy to tell that first of my three apps is finally available in App Store:

FontType 1.0.

It's a small and nice "font viewer" application. Got several reasons to write it, so many that I want to list them:

Application Failed Codesign Verification

Submission to App Store wasn't as easy as I thought in previous blog. Not really surprised, but this problem was tough to solve. Not tough as in hard to fix, but as hard to figure out:

Application failed codesign verification.  The signature was invalid, or it was not signed with an Apple submission certificate. (-19011)

Three Applications to Be Released

There are still some minor open issues, like icons, colors, title and writing webpages. Otherwise everything is just fine :) Well, besides releasing the apps, I mean. But that day is getting closer.

"Time" which shows current time and that's pretty much it. Lean, clean and simple on purpose, but I fear it might be too simple for Apple. Might have to add something to get approved, unfortunately.

"Font" application, since I just love fonts. There must be 50 fonts applications in App Store already, but wanted to do my own. Looks good, got some nice features and I have a list of things to add.

"Log" application to display in-device NSLog output. Needed this kind of application in "real work", but couldn't find any with requires features. The first release will be simple on purpose, need some feedback to decide what to add in next version. Too many choises to be made based only on single person's (me) feedback.

Prepare Username and Password for App Store Review

Our application Chatpoints (iPhone version available here) has free "guest" account as well as free registration. Choose a username and password and you can login immediately.

Sounds easy, right? Not easy enough, as App Store rejection email told:

What Did You Ship in 2010?

Inspired by Seth Godin's and Roadfire Software's posts, here's my take on "what did you ship in 2010":

How to Shorten iTunes Links

Updating my CV, wanted to add a link to a released application inside AppStore. Since I had to search how to do it (again), I now write it down here:

1. Go to your product in AppStore
2. Find the popup menu and select "Copy Link"
3. http://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/zattr/id376987618?mt=8
4. Remove the host name "apple" from URL
5. Remove AppStore country code, "fi" in this case
6. Remove everything after your application name
7. http://itunes.com/app/zattr
8. Copy & paste into your CV

All done now, looking good!

Entitlement 'keychain-access-groups' has value not permitted by a provisioning profile

You build and install application you are developing and fail with a flash without any obvious error note. Using iPhone Configuration Utility you're device's Console contain something like this:

Fri Jul 2 10:26:23 jouni-iDevice installd[6313] : entitlement 'keychain-access-groups' has value not permitted by a provisioning profile
Fri Jul 2 10:26:23 jouni-iDevice installd[6313] : entitlement 'application-identifier' has value not permitted by a provisioning profile

The reason is that you have previously installed your application from App Store and overwriting app binary with a developer version is not enough.

Quick fix is to delete the application from device, then build and install again.

Apple AppStore status: Rejected

Some application submission status change emails go to "support" address only, not to iTunes Connect account holder.

There's excuse for everything, I can think of a dozen right away. Still find it rather strange that some emails go to account holder (review started) while other not (rejected). Makes one wonder many a things. Processes and people, for example. Theory and reality vs. achieved results. Investing time in right places.

Reason of Rejection: does not work with soon-to-be-released OS update.

Guess it's time to download beta SDK. Makes one wonder a few other things, too, like importance of backwards compatibility and legacy support. Seen different solutions for it, but kind of like Apple approach. Good for business, too.

Btw the content of "reject" email was just excellent. There was everything I could ask for and then some. Definitely time invested in right place!

Apple AppStore submit observations

Read docs a dozen times, but somehow missed these:

• Keywords can be max 100 characters - including spaces and commas
• Select "None" for first rating to get immediately 4+ rated
• CFBundleShortVersionString in the Info.plist file must be a period-separated list of at most three positive integers. You cannot use e.g. "1.0.0 (1)" format, except in ad hoc releases
• Large icon filename must end with .jpeg .jpg .tif .tiff .png. It's not about file format, but filename
  
• Upload screenshots in reverse order, the first shall be last