I work as a software developer, but I am absolutely new to Apple in general. We have the following case in a project, and we have not been able to figure out a solution for it, I would really appreciate some advise to find a solution (or drop the case if not possible)
A (potential) customer with multiple retail stores is interested in having a very simple app to display some content (this could an image or html, nothing too complicated) and periodically update this content from a server (this requirement is important). So it is very simple case, to use the device screen as advertising space
But here is the catch, users should be able to go out of this app and check out the device's system and other apps, and then the content should come back on the foreground when the device is idle. So basically we need something like a screensaver app that fetches the content (images) from a server and keeps them updated.
We have been looking at the guided access mode, but we are not sure it fulfills the requirements, because of the following issues
- Allowing the user to check out the device system and other apps. As far as we understood guided access restricts the device to one app.
- Re-launch the app (or bring it to the foreground) when the device has been idle for a period of time.
Note that we should account for a variety of devices (iPhone and iPads) with different OS versions
I appreciate your help and ideas. Thanks.
Apple does not allow apps to run continuously in the background except for a small limited group of exceptions. (music playing apps, for example.)
It's possible to set up your app to pretend to be a music playing app, and stay running in the background, but that means you will not be allowed on the app store.
Your client may be able to use the enterprise program to create apps for use in their retail stores. Enterprise apps don't have to go through the app store approval process.
I did this for a client recently (for an enterprise app.) As I recall I would have the app request background processing as soon as it moved to the background, and when it was notified that it's background time was ending, I would play a short "silence" sound and request another block of background time. Unfortunately it was work for hire and the contract ended, so I did not retain the source code.
Related
This might be asking for the moon but here goes...
Is it possible to have an iOS app receive data and then forward it all while running in the background?
We're a restaurant currently using an ordering system that uses a main iPad as the till, with a second iPad in the kitchen to receive orders, and another third iPad used by the servers to take orders. Orders are sent to the main till which relays orders to the kitchen.
Works great... Unless someone switches app on the main till iPad to our other (necessary) hosting app, then all hell breaks loose and all orders stop getting sent.
Developer (small team) has told us it's impossible to solve but I have done some digging into recent Apple APIs that allow simple tasks to run in the background and have seen a few promising options, or perhaps it's possible via the External Accessory Framework, or even syncing via iCloud? A question for the more knowledgable than me, but is there currently a workaround to solve this that I could suggest or are they right in that it's currently impossible in iOS?
Yes there are ways to have an app in the background receive data, generally using either:
beginBackgroundTaskWithName:expirationHandler:
or
beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler:
Take a look at the Background Execution section in the documentation for more info...
I was trying to get a specific info before a IOS App development task which I searched but couldn't find anything relevant.
Wanted to know whether this requirement restricts (non compliance issue as per publish guidelines) the app to be published in App Store with features as below
User scans and lists all available wifi connections in a tableview
Selects one of the Wifi connection and connects on button click
Stores the password and SSID for future connections.
Would there be any compliance issue related to the same functionalities when submitting to IOS app store. One of my colleague have advised me about the same but not able to explain why? Which I tried to find out searching the internet, but too specific to find anything relevant. Deeply appreciate an Expert advise on this.
Thanks in advance.
I can't find anything in the Review Guidelines that would object your app idea: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines
A couple of areas where you should have a more detailed look:
2.5.1 Apps may only use public APIs.
2.5.9 Apps that alter the functions of standard switches, such as the Volume Up/Down and Ring/Silent switches, or other native user
interface elements or behaviors will be rejected.
5.1 Privacy
Technically, I'm not sure if it's even possible to change the WIFI not via the settings app, so I'd have a look their first. (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/1592/is-there-an-ipod-app-to-easily-switch-wifi-on-and-off)
I don't believe I've ever seen an app or a way to change SSID outside the Settings app. I explored a way to detect network changes, connects, disconnects, which work fine while the app is running. I was never able to influence how the user connected, just that a change happened. It also falls apart pretty quickly when the user backgrounds the app. Trying to keep a background task open long enough to poll the current connection fails pretty fast.
I wish Apple would provide some system level notification of Wifi connect events. This could be very useful to developers that want a little more control than Background App Refresh events.
I have a bunch (1500+) of in-house iPads, WiFi only, with Enterprise Developer, that I want to run a task on either, preferred in this order
A.) every hour
B.) every time they connect to a new wireless
Since I have Enterprise developer I don't need the app store approval.
I have read a few different ways of doing a background task but am trying to find the right method.
A.) Pretend to be a VoIP app. The app would start on startup and stay in the background but the user can close it. How do I force it to re-open?
B.) Play a empty sound file. Same issue as above and without the launch on startup?
C.) Significant location change. Don't know how to code it. Should run the task when they change wireless networks right? Even if it's not already open? Does it work without GPS and cellular? Ala http://preyproject.com/blog/2013/01/how-does-prey-work-on-iphone-ipad
Another app had issues with it though http://orbicule.blogspot.com/2012/12/discontinuing-undercover-ios.html
Ideas? Example code?
The apps is in background?
This should be possible for in-house apps.
wi-fi change should be possible using the "Reachability" example from Apple, I guess. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/Reachability/Introduction/Intro.html
I would go for #C (significant location change). It can be acheived using the CLLocationManager framework
[[CLLocationManager sharedLocationManager] startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges]
I need to do a study of what apps are actually used among a group of test users taking part of an experiment. I would like to know the time each of the random 3rd party apps have been used to do statistics on it. If possible, I plan on distributing an iOS app through TestFlight. My app will gather the app usage statistics and send it to my server.
The overall goal is to get total usage time for each installed app on a daily base from each of the users taking part of the experiment.
What I have:
One of my ideas are to develop an app that will use the VoIP backgrounding profile (or similar) to run in the background and periodically (like every 10 secs) log the name or bundle identifier of the current foreground app (if any).
I have found a method to get the current running processes: Can we retrieve the applications currently running in iPhone and iPad
The method described in the above post gives a struct kinfo_proc that includes other structs with information such the process name, priority and running time (including time spent in the background). I have not been able to identify a flag revealing what process is in the foreground. Also the priority does not seem to be a reliable indictor. Something I'm missing here?
The above method can be used to get the current running time for a process, but as each app can be sleeping in the background for days (or weeks) this is a poor indicator for how much the app has actually been used. If I could kill all the running user installed apps every hour or so I could get an indicator of how often apps are used. The most used apps would be cold-started by the user more often. But that would give an unpleasant experience for the testers as apps are killed randomly. But anyway, is there a way I can kill another process?
Another idea is to traverse through the view hierarchy to probe the label of the leftmost app in the task bar. Any ideas of how this might be possible to hack?
I had another idea of analyzing device logs and gathering app usage statistics that way. However it seems that app background-foreground switching activity is not logged to the system console. Is there some other logs containing this information or can I get it somehow by enabling energy diagnostics logging?
If I had my test users set up to use Apple Mobile Device Management (MDM) would I then be able to collect the information I am interested in?
Any ideas are very much appreciated.
A few notes:
My test users does not have jailbroken devices, but I can use private APIs as I am not distributing through the App Store.
I would use an analytics tool like Flurry Analytics to get the data concerning usage statistics, which you could then download into your app using their API. They can get you very details stats on how your users are using your app, how frequently, etc. It's a great tool, plus it's free!
There are 2 iPhone applications. One application running in the foreground and the other running in the background. Is there any way to get the background application to send data over USB without coming into foreground? Ideally we want to keep the foreground app in the foreground, while the background app process some data. Once the data is processed it will inform the foreground app that the data has been processed.
No it cannot. It cannot even do this without the use of private frameworks, unless you're in the Made for iPhone program. If you are, then your organization will know, based on the documentation made available to you, what you can and cannot access, when and how.
Should you be in the Made for iPhone program, and are unclear as to what you have access to and when, contact the person in your organization who is the technical contact with Apple for this program, they will be able to give you the details.
If the task is started while the app is in the foreground and you call the appropriate beginBackgroundTask/endBackgroundTask methods, you should be able to have it continue running after the app is backgrounded.
Note that access to USB is restricted (see jer's answer) and that there's no officially sanctioned way to communicate between different apps on the same device. Also, you can only buy/download one app at a time in the App Store and I can't see Apple approving an app that required you to download a second app for it to work. So you may have bigger problems to solve first.
It would help significantly if you told us what you actually wanted to achieve. For example, "I want MyApp on the user's phone to communicate with MyApp on the user's computer".
The absolute easiest way is to send data between the phone and a computer is to require that they're both on the same Wi-Fi network. Several iPhone apps incorporate a web server (this was the easiest way of "file sharing" before OS 3.2), and many more iPhone apps connect to a computer running server software.
Your other options, more or less:
Reverse-engineer the Bluetooth side of GameKit and reimplement it on the computer-side. I'm not aware of anyone who's done this. Loosely, I think it's IP over Bluetooth PAN plus some sort of Bluetooth service discovery.
Audio input/output, e.g. the headphone jack or certain pins on the dock connector. I'm not entirely sure how the mic side works (the resistance was a bit high for a carbon mic when I checked), but you might get lucky and find a way to turn it into "line in" or find "line in" pins on the dock connector.
A webcam pointing at the iDevice screen (and the iDevice camera pointing at the computer screen). Ewwwww.
Join the MFi program.