I had developed two separate builds for my game, one for iPhone and one for iPad. I had uploaded each of these builds on the iOS App Store a few years ago, back before universal builds become common.
The names for these builds are “XYZ” (for iPhone) and “XYZ HD” (for iPad). Now, I have developed a universal build for the same game and I would like to name my updated game as “XYZ HD” on the iOS App Store. I have two questions:
How many listings for this game should I maintain? I definitely want to maintain the iPhone listing as it has better and more user reviews compared to the iPad version. If I keep both listings, it would be odd as I would have the same universal build for each listing and the same pricing. I suppose I could point out in the updated listing that it is a universal build.
What should I name the updated listing(s)? If I only maintain one listing, I would maintain the iPhone version but I understand that Apple will not allow me to call my iPhone build “XYZ HD” even if I unpublish the iPad version. Therefore, I could keep the old name “XYZ” which does not highlight that it now has better graphics for iPads or I could do some weird new name to get around Apple’s naming restrictions such as “XYZ–HD”.
I’d appreciate any suggestions on these issues. Thank you.
Maintain 1 listing (your most downloaded/rated/reviewed one)
Get rid of the "HD", it's not relevant anymore. All apps and devices are HD in 2015. Apps that have "HD" in their name are most likely old apps from the times of not universal apps.
You could make a little update to your iPad version to warn your user of the new listing model. (Or use your app messaging/notification system if you already have one)
Related
We are about the release app to the iPad store under the name appName. We don't want to add anything to that name (e.g. HD ) . the app is now only for iPad(not universal) .
Later we would like to release it to the iPhone under the same name .
But, for this to work we will have to later make that same app to be universal , and release an update to it.
Problem: On the release date to iPhone , we will not get the right attention , because its only an update, not a new app. (e.g. get to be in the first places/promption by Apple ,etc ).
How you usually solve this problem ,to get a full attention as a new release, when you only submit an update to include another iDevices ?
This is more of opinion question rather than a programming one. Still I will let you know my thoughts.
This statement is not entirely true.
"Problem: On the release date to iPhone , we will not get the right attention , because its only an update, not a new app. (e.g. get to be in the first places/promption by Apple ,etc )."
what exactly are you plans for advertising your release or update? If you hope that website that monitor new app releases automatically to advertise your app then yes, you get a shot at the new release and updates not so much.
You can release an iPad version and then with an update make the app universal as long as you advertise your app update like mad all over the social media and such. Hopefully your update will be received with just as interest as your initial app release.
The only other option, which you already know, is to create two different apps with different names "HD" and have two sets of code to maintain which I can tell from experience is a pain in the butt.
If I were you I would hold off on releasing an iPad version till I made it universal. Trust me Apple customers now expect all apps to work on every apple devices and not to buy the same app twice for iPhone vs iPad.
Just my two cents.
You can use the app same name, but launch the universal version of the app with a different bundle ID. No problem from the Apple side.
I developed my first iphone app recently and would like to port it to an ipad. I've got a couple of related questions.
1) from what i've read, it sounds like creating a universal app will increase the size of the app that the user will download onto their iphone/ipad. is that right? my app is not small right now and i'd like to add some functions to the ipad version. Its something of a disincentive to package a universal app if it means a larger app for iphone users who won't benefit from the added functions added to the ipad app.
2) is it possible to have separate apps for the ipad and iphone but only make users pay for one version of them, if i don't go for a universal app? That is, if someone pays for the iphone version right now, i'd like them to have the ipad version for free when i finish it in about a month. is that possible outside of a universal app?
thanks,
rich
1) Yes, a universal app has everything for both versions so it is bigger. For a user that wants the app on both types of devices this isn't really a problem.
2) No, there is no way to have two separate apps such that the user can have both while only paying for one. At least it's not possible through standard means. If you make both apps free with IAP, then you could have your apps generate some sort of code that could be entered into the other to grant full functionality. Such a scheme is a lot of extra work.
Try to do a universal app and see how big it gets. All of the code is shared and as long as you don't have too many iPad-only full screen images or iPhone-only full screen images, the universal app isn't much bigger than a non-universal app.
I am trying to decide on whether or not an app should be Universal. Here are my requirements and questions related to each:
In-app purchases. If you download the app on the iPhone and make a purchase, it should reflect that in the iPad version. Obviously you shouldn't have to buy it twice. Is this a dealbreaker? Is there some way to tie in-app purchases together in separate binaries?
iCloud sync would be nice. The user creates content in the app and it would be great if the content created on the iPhone showed up in the iPad app. Again, does this mean it has to be universal?
The app is large and contains a lot of images. The main drawback of a universal app is that I'm capped at 50MB over-air download, and that the single binary means iPhones get all the iPad images and vice versa.
if I did make them two separate apps, do I separate everything in my Xcode project into two different targets and build that way?
Any answers to these questions or other things I should consider would be appreciated.
I think,better option is Universal App.
The app is large and contains a lot of images. The main drawback of a
universal app is that I'm capped at 50MB over-air download, and that
the single binary means iPhones get all the iPad images and vice
versa.
Yes. This is the only difficulty that I measured. However you can clearly specify which images should be load in iPad and which should only load in iPhone by naming it separately.
If Im correct , you can use some thing like myImage~iPhone.png or myImage~iPad.png
first of all, I know there are many questions similar to this one, but, they are old and the answers in them unfortunately no longer work, since the game has changed without Hacklo.us to do part of the process.
Basically, I want to develop for iOS and test the apps I make, and later in the future I may want to submit them to the Apple Store, but for now I'm not willing to pay 99$ to join the Apple iOS developer program just to use my apps in my iPhone.
I have a jailbroken iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.
The only posts I found about how to do this, either use Hackulo.us (that went down about 2 months ago) or something called Jailcoder that is also offline and they also seem to work with only old versions of XCode/iOS (not clear about that point).
Any new progresses on how to to this with the present conditions?
Simple. After building the app, just use some utility (SSH, iExplorer, etc.) to copy the app bundle to the /Applications directory on the device. After that, either run the uicache tool or respring the iPhone to make the application appear on the home screen.
I have an app that has been in the store for a while now. I am coming out with a completely new app to replace the old one but it is not compatible with the original iPad (iPad 1). I don't want to completely get rid of the original app because, believe it or not, there is still a large number of people running it on iPad 1's. Is there a way to somehow set up either the app or the app store to where users who have newer iPads only see the new app in the app store and not the old one? (They have different titles, icons, etc)
EDIT: it seems that you cannot change the capabilities of an already published app when you submit a new version. This would rule out the first approach I suggested and leave only limiting the current deployment target.
You could require a device capability not available on the iPad 1, like the camera.
This amounts to setting UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities in your app plist file to front-facing-camera.
Another option you would have, in case the former one did not work, is setting your deployment target to iOS 6 -- this would also rule out the iPad 1s (and all devices running iOS 4 and 5).