I've noticed a few products in the field (e.g. here and here) that are offering an API to programatically reply to App Store reviews, i.e. including iOS App Store.
My research suggests that the App Store Connect API does not expose this functionality, so can anybody explain how I am able to achieve the same functionality?
Is there, for example, an undocumented API I might use, or are these products little more than mechanical turks?
I am working on an app that needs to have functionality to collect charitable donations.
Apple Pay on the Web: Acceptable Use Guidelines
I found at the above link that collection of charitable donations is prohibited with Apple Pay.
App Store Review Guidelines
Here in Section 3.2.2 it states that you cant use In-App Purchases to collect charitable donations.
I have found another StackOverflow post that brushes on my question here.
So, according to the Rules and Regulations, I know that I cant use in app Purchases for Charitable Donations. I also know that I can't use Apple Pay.
What is the best way to prompt a user to donate without forcing them to manually enter all of their payment info into an online form?
I have looked a little bit at Apple Wallet, but the only way that would work is if someone already has their card set up and it will help AutoFill the information. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is what I have understood.
Additionally, is there any reason Apple has given as to why it is so difficult to give charitable donations? A coworker is doing the same thing for Android and hasn't run into nearly as many roadblocks as I have.
The answer is no. Apple doesn't let you its in their rules:
21) Charities and contributions Apps that include the ability to make
donations to recognized charitable organizations must be free The
collection of donations must be done via a web site in Safari or an
SMS
You can call the app review department in California: (408) 996-1010 OR (512) 674-2000, but I highly doubt you'll get any luck.
My advice would be the following:
Get creative and find some simple feature/service that you can add to your service that you can sell with an IAP/Apple Wallet that provides some simple benefit to the member, and you market that as all proceeds going towards the cause your raising money for. As long as your actually delivering some digital good within your app, I don't think Apple can dictate what you actually do with the money, you just can't take money for nothing using their service.
See this similar post: How can I handle donations through iOS?
You might want to check section 21 more closely. If your app is free to use you may be able to get around it. Or just call the review team directly. That would be fun.
Apple accepts charitable donations in-app now. You must sign up using Benevity.
Details are at https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/nonprofits/
Apple does not allow in-app donations. You can redirect to a website (eg. PayPal), but this must happen outside the app.
Using Safari View Controller to open a webview within the app will be rejected.
Instead, force the URL to be handled by the device's default web browser - they will allow this.
In the meantime, Apple allowed donations by using Apple Pay within your app and website:
https://developer.apple.com/support/apple-pay-nonprofits/
So this should be doable without web views within iOS.
As per Apple's app-store rules, you cannot collect charities or donations from the native iOS app.
All is correct, you cannot accept money from within the app.
HOWEVER, as per feedback from my conservation app being rejected, was that they will NOT accept any payments within the app for charitable contributions. But, if you takes your customer to an external link, via webview (must be webview and not built into app) and from this webview site, they can create payments. If the charity you want to support has a website that accepts contributions, you can direct them there via with webview.
I know from the Apple developer account we can get how much downloads have done for our particular app. Now our clients asking they want to check the apps downloads without involving developers. Is there any way to find those details besides from the appstore, or else without accessing the developer account
Thanks
You usually see your download numbers in itunesconnect and therefore you can just invite your clients to look into the data there. There are also a number of web services that use the data from itunesconnect to show more details, for instance app statistics.
If you want more data and even logging, many users integrate additional logging features in their apps like google analytics for instance.
If this is not what you are looking for, please give me some more information on what you are trying to accomplish!
I am a developer working on an open-source project called Freeseer (http://freeseer.github.io/) it is used for recording conferences and talks. I would like to bring live streaming to Freeseer, however in order to develop and test live streaming I need a Google account with 100 subscribers (as listed here http://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/creator-benefits.html).
I am not asking for subscribers, nor am I interested in monetization of the account. I simply want to know if Google provides developer accounts, or can grant development privileges.
(I am well aware this is not a technical question, it is much more suited for a Google group or developer forum, unfortunately the existing one has been closed).
The 100 subscriber restriction was removed last month.
http://apiblog.youtube.com/2013/12/3-2-1-and-you-are-live.html
I have several applications in App Store and I wish to get further advanced analytics for how they are doing. I'm already listed to some sites that do analytics for Number of Downloads and for Online Ranking (they check every hour where was each app ranked in each country).
I want to have the following:
Landing - I want to check how people got to my application's App Store / iTunes
page; from commercial banners, reviews (I want to see that it came
from a specific web page), from inner banners I have in my apps
directing to my other apps, etc...
App Store Search / Keywords - I want to check which keywords were
effective and which are redundant.
Keywords General Search - I want to check which keywords are
efficient in general for the categories my apps belong to.
Users Analytics - I want to check how many of my users have both the Free/Lite and Full versions of my apps. Maybe there are more
analytics I can look for in this area (if anyone has any good idea).
Any help or direction would be very much appreciated.
Answers numbered according the question
1: What you could do is set your Banners/Ads etc. to a 'middleman' URL on your Server which tracks the User Data and then redirects them to the iTunes App Store Page rather than directly going to the App Store Page. That way you can track the URL's from where the User came from etc. Also Banners and Ads should provide their own Tracking Data which could also help? For reviews, you could maybe ask the reviewer to use your Application Website Page with directs to this middleman URL and onto the App Store Link rather than just the direct App Store link.
2 and 3: I don't think Apple have any sort of tracking in place to the Developers for this kind of data besides the Sales and Trends data you get in iTunes Connect.
4: I've found Flurry Analytics to be an excellent tool for seeing how Users interact with my applications. You can set events in your Program and track various different events. You can easily track the Free/Paid by setting an event for each and then tracking it. It also provides a wealth of other data which informs you better of your user base. I definitely recommend checking it out for this kind of thing.