I'm trying to set up my newsstand application for iOS.
I've made Auto-Renewable Subscription In-App Purchases for subscription, I've made Non-Consumable In-App Purchases for single issues, so it's ok, but one thing still bothers me.
iTunes Connect Developer Guide says "You can enable your app for Newsstand from the app summary page for an app by clicking Newsstand.", but I still unable to get the purpose of this. What's the use of issues I add under this button?
Is there is a way to get this list of issues from my app? Or why it is there?
This is for purposes of covers being shown in iTunes Preview / App Store. If you don't use it at all, the covers won't change, however using Atom Feed to update them seems to be better solution.
You can find how to use it here: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/docs/NewsstandAtomFeedSpecification.pdf
Related
I read many answers here with similar problems but none helped me to get my app approved. It's been 3 weeks of trial and error. I am totally frustrated of it.
What I am trying to do:
I am submitting my first app (there is no other app with my account created yet).
I have one in-app purchase (nonconsumable) in my app that removes ads and opens all content.
Sounds easy right?
I have been rejected for a few different reasons that has one thing in common - they (Apple testers) cannot successfully perform in-app purchase.
What I did:
Successfully bought and restored in app-purchase with my sandbox user.
At first I was using swifty storekit library. Got refused with "Unknown error. Please contact support" So I ditched this library and Implemented whole code myself, according to apple documentation.
As I read there can be problem with my agreements, tax and banking settings in Itunes connect - found out that there was red line about transfering my account settings (dont remember exact line) - did dissapear after 2 days by itself as I read in some answer here. There is no problem there now.
Did find out that I must wait some time before in-app purchase starts working. I takes about 2 days to in-app purchases start working with testflight user, so waited until it starts to work - then successfully bought in-app purchase and restore also works fine even with testflight testing account. (again got refused)
there is not exactly stated how to submit first in-app purchase ever, it is just said submit with binary. I did not get this at first, found out that I should not send in app purchase by itself, but I should "append" my in app purchase in the same form as I am sending my app. At first I tried to send my in app purchase in its own formular. But then I got rejected with error "We found that while you have submitted in-app purchase products for your app, the in-app purchase functionality is not present in your binary." (I say it again - there must be api there as I can successfully buy app with test account).
read in some other answer that I can ask to get my in app purchase approved, so I write "please approve my in app purchase - they did, but I got refused.
Now I cannot select this in app purchase with my binary, as it is not shown for selection probably because it is already approved. So I did submit app without it and got the "in-app purchase functionality is not present in your binary" error again.
Created new in app purchase, this one can be selected to be submited with app. Got rejected again, with error.
"can not connect to iTunes"
In app-purchase is then switched to "Developer Action Needed". This is probably a good thing as if they would approve it then I could not select it with binary as it would be invisible.
What else should I try? What to change? Where to look? I am totaly lost. 3 weeks of time lost. As I cannot reproduce the problem I cannot solve it. Programing is easy, but to get app approved looks like imposible.
Few of many many visited links:
In App Purchase functionality is not present in your binary
iOS In-App purchase works in development but not in production
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/13324
https://www.innofied.com/in-app-purchase-working-ios-solution/
What I did next: recorded video of myself successfully buying in app purchase with my testflight account and uploaded it to youtube, added link to my reply form.
Next try: I sent them this message:
"Good evening,
I am totally out of options. Is there anybody at apple who I can consult this? ... Because, everything is working on my side. As I cannot reproduce your problems I can't make it right.
I have tested it with my sandbox user - it works - I can make a purchase successfully and I can restore it too. I noticed that with testflight it needs some time to start working (about two days). So with this build I waited two days and when it did start working on testflight i submited my app. This is my first submit of app ever, should I do something special? You already approved my first in-app purchase in one of my trials, but I cannot select it to be published with my app as it is already approved (it is not shown, so cannot be selected) and if i dont submit it with my app then I got rejected with confusing error stating that in app purchase api is not included. So I created second in-app purchase - the one submited here which is now after rejection in "Developer Action Needed" as you rejected the app. So what can I do now? Don't you need to wait some time after you approve my in app purchase (submited with the app) to start working? Did you approve my in-app purchase which I submited with my app by the way? Please dont send me link to the documentation. As everything works on my side there is nothing I can find there. Give me some advice or contact to someone who can Investigate what is wrong on your side, as you cannot make it work... thank you in advance"
After rougly one day, status did change (they changed) to "in review", and after another half hour I did get email with "Congratulations! We're pleased to let you know that your app, Juggling, has been approved for the App Store"
So to answer my own question ... how to get through application approval? I don't know. What I did wrong, what should I do? I don't know. Are there real people there or artificial inteligence? I don't know. What exactly was the problem? I don't know. What did finally do a change? I don't know. Hope this answers will help next generations of programmers get their apps approved in the future. (Pun intended)
Thank you
First my question, then my situation:
Question: Can a new binary be used as an IAP? So instead of using the IAP feature to download say a weapon pack or a song, can it download a completely new binary of the same app, that way when the user upgrades they no longer have ads and they have additional features that weren't present in the free version.
Situation: As brief as possible, Apple has approved both my IAP package and my new free version for the public to have accessibility to upgrade. However, when trying to upgrade, after making the purchase (sandbox or live), nothing happens... the account gets debited the 99 cents, but the user never receives the paid version of the app. I'm assuming that there's an issue with the actual package.... which leads me to believe that Apple approved it without checking the integrity (perhaps it's not Apple's responsibility, but I figured that checking for a faulty IAP would be just as important as checking for crashes).
Am I on the right track about the packaging being faulty? Could it be something else? If doing a new binary is possible, is there documentation anywhere online about setting it up properly?
Thank you!
You are going about this all wrong. You can't provide an updated app as an IAP. Your free app with IAP must include all desired functionality built into it. When the user purchases a feature through IAP, the existing app uses that as a flag and simply starts letting the user use the additional feature(s) or to stop displaying ads.
Basically on startup your app checks to see if the user has made the in-app purchase or not. If not, you show ads and/or hide certain functionality. If they have, you don't show ads and you show the appropriate functionality.
In-app purchases are there for products which on download can be used after purchasing. But in your case you are downloading the full version of the app on in-app purchase. Do you have any way to load binary of an app? No, right?
What you can do is just disable all functionalities of full version of the app through coding, when on purchase just enable all features for pro version.
i've searched around a similar question but i didn't found any, so:
I have an old iphone paid app on iStore (and a free/lite version with iAds banner), now i want to renew it, adding iPad version and other stuffs;
with this new version i'd like to set the app free, add in-app purchase to the paid app (and delete the lite version), adding iAd banner until user buy the in-app purchase item.
the problem is that an old user who paid for the old app and now download the new version will see the iAd banner (and of course i don't want this) and must pay again to avoid it.
Is there any way to check if a user of my new-version app is also an old user of the old-version app?
A partial solution i found out is to check a preference file that the old app saves in it's bundle documents folder, but that could work fine just in case the user has installed the old app on the device when he update my app, not in case he deleted from device (or installing to a new one)
Other solution could be to keep the lite version on iStore and add the inApp purchase only to that version, and let the full version with the current price, but doing so, the lite version after a user pay for inApp purchase item would become exactly equal to the piad app (and Apple may refuse this, and i don't like this solution too)
Any idea for this purpose, is there an easy way i have not seen?
thanks in advance
There is no way how to find out if the user paid for the app. The solution with the "bundle documents folder" is not good in my opinion, because once the user delete the app, he will not have available the premium version of the app again.
Similar questions:
Convert existing iOS paid app to freemium model with in-app purchase
Transition an existing paid for app to free version with In App Purchase
iPhone + upgrade existing paid application on app store to free application with In App purchase + what about the customers who have already purchased the paid application
I too had similar issues where I wanted to switch a paid app to free. There really isn't anyway to reliably check which user had already downloaded your app in the past. If you add iAds and they only disable through in-app purchase then it means it applies to everyone.
While writing this post I thought of one trick. Lets say you submit your app with iAd changes today to app store and it gets approved on 7/20/13. What you can do is upon app startup have a grace period code check i.e.
if (TodaysDate < 8/20/13)
{
//Make your NSUserdefaults to true. As if the user had purchased your in-app purchase. So don't show them any ads.
}
else
{
//Month has passed and hopefully most of your users who owned the app already had updated it by now
}
This way you have given your existing and any new users a month time (with no iAds). Any users who download the app after 8/20/13 will see your iAds and will have to pay in-app to disable them.
From my experience I have found that it's always advisable to keep your current users happy otherwise they will bomb your app rating with negative reviews. Which will show up under your latest app update.
Have you tried contacting developer support? https://developer.apple.com/support/
From what I know to be true you can't tell if they have previously bought the app without invading their privacy.
I need to support the purchase of single issues within an iOS newsstand app (and not just a free or paid subscription).
Do I need to manually create a new IAP in iTunesConnect for every single issue, or can I somehow automate this (as with the atom feed for Newsstand metadata like issue cover URL, title, summary etc.))?
Follow-up question: If it's not a newsstand app, would that make things easier/worse (to support purchasing single issues)? How do other "normal" apps handle the frequent addition of new paid content?
To answer my own questions, summarizing some threads on the Apple developer forums:
Yes, if you want to sell individual issues, you must have a (non-consumable) IAP set up for each.
Last fall, "Transporter" was added to iTunesConnect to allow upload and management of IAPs from the command line. See WWDC12 slides. You can find the user guide and the XML spec at the bottom of the "Manage your applications" page in ITC.
I have completed my iPhone app. It is an app in the finance category. Now, I wish to incorporate in-app purchase.
But before this, I was thinking if I can get the app approved by Apple first.
I will limit 2 features in the app (which can be purchased via in-app purchase once it is added).
I wish to make it live on app store first (with limited features). Then later, I can incorporate in-app purchases. Is it possible for me to do so? Because I will be limiting certain features of the app. Will Apple accept this?
If I remember correctly, there is an option when the App should hit the AppStore. I usually selected the current date as the desired AppStore date. But you could select some point in the future, say one year from now. That should solve your problem, doesn't it?
Until then, you'll see if Apple accepts your app and can later on upload new versions with additional features.
Any minimum viable product(new features can be added in the future updates) can be uploaded to App store. Checkout the Apple's Guidelines