Let me first begin by explaining my goal for this app. I am looking for ideas on the best way to accomplish my goal (or at least close to my goal). This app is completely internal and thus does not need to comply with any apple guidelines (aka, can use private api's).
Our company has ~20 iOS devices. These devices are used by multiple people throughout the organization. Often times we are looking for a specific device and need to be able to track it down. So I am looking for a way to track who has what device.
My initial thought was to make an app that allows the user to pick their name from the list and then have a server that keeps track of who has what device. This worked well for a while, but now people have decided its too much work and have stopped using it. Users can just not open the app or press the home button to exit it. So now I'm looking for alternatives.
Here are some ideas that didn't work:
Custom Lock Screen - (Requires jailbroken devices so not an option)
"Lock To App" from Apple Configurator - (No way to exit our app. We don't want to hinder normal use. Note exit(0) will just cause iOS to restart our app)
MDM options - (Didn't see any that would provide this functionality. Let me know if otherwise. We would like to implement it ourselves, but a 3rd party is an option)
At this point I'm just looking for ideas or knowledge. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
I would add a sticker on each device and then, if i need a specific device, i would push a notification with a message like: "person with the device X ..we need it in room Y " .Then it's up to the person who has it to return it (or smth).
The sticker itself would be a numbered decal... or a picture..or something like that.
It's just an idea
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I am creating an app, which needs to do something when the user presses the power button 5 times.
I figured out that it's difficult to implement in iOS, but I think it's not impossible. How do I listen for power key events, even when the app is running in the background?
Can anyone help me to find solution?
you can tap a power key once and also you cannot detect the event from your application, this is not possible in iOS as far now, better try a different way to send alert with in your app, set some conditions with in your app and then send a alert based on those conditions if satisfied, I think this would be better,
Somehow ,If you try to override the existing functionality of the power key, apple will reject your app I think so,
You can't directly get the power button events. But there are notifications which you can count like UIApplicationProtectedDataWillBecomeUnavailable or UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification. Or just register for all low level notifications with CFNotificationCenter and see if you find something fitting like com.apple.springboard.lockstate.
I don't think you can override system level actions like holding the power button, pressing the home button, overriding the mute sound switch within your own app. iOS system doesn't exactly behave like an normal computer OS, it's to much more limited.
Apple is not allowing you to use hardware components completely. They have added some restrictions. They provided the method in the app delegate i.e. applicationDidEnterBackground can catch the home button press .Also they has provided the the API's to access the camera,bluetooth etc .At least this much of API's I know which provided by apple publicly to access the hardware. You cannot access the other hardware elements in your application which not provided publicly by apple .If you are able to do this by any way then also your application will not approved by apple .
Is is possible to dynamically figure out the position of an app's icon on the home screen of an iphone/ipad?
Sorry I don't have enough credit to comment yet so I'm posting here.
To my knowledge no you cannot natively or easily do this. I know of no open source or other libraries. The reason being that your app exists in its own world, it is not in touch per say with the rest of the device. It can get permissions to read and write data but it doesn't know of itself.
Does that make sense?
When you open a website it cannot know which tab it is in the browser. Instead it knows how it was accessed and what device (physically) is using it. It knows the user-agent, the time, the browser, etc because that is information sent to it in the request. In turn the phone on launch gives data to the app in how to handle it but not for example how many other apps are running, or where it is on the screen. It's not normally considered relevant to run time. In addition it's a security feature in preventing an app from deleting or altering other apps, as well as itself. If you have an iPhone you will notice that SIRI cannot turn off google maps navigation or any other non-apple specific app. Only apps natively comparable and private party ones (ex apples) are accessible because Apple did that intentionally. They all know of their own existence and each others. However non-native in the sense of apps that do not come preinstalled and manufactured by the company creating the device are less trustworthy, in addition there are no guarantees about how they will be run by the device, where they will be, or what other apps will be there.
It is true that an app can request for another app it may be comparable with but it is up the user to handle that information.
May I ask for curiosities sake why you are trying to do this? Are there any other workarounds?
However in terms of it being physically possible, yes. I doubt that apple allows independent developers to do this however. But an example of this occurring may be gridlock where a user can move their apps around differently on the screen. The app in this case has the ability to access app position. But I believe in this case app position is about the UI and not about nested files. apps cannot to my knowledge modify information outside of their own file. Imagine if you had an app that could edit other games scores.
It is not possible to dynamically find out the position of an app's icon on the Home Screen (even for jailbreak apps). Apple wants you to respect the user's privacy settings.
Extra Info - There is popular JavaScript library that adds a promo bubble to the bottom of your mobile web application, inviting users to bookmark the app to their device's home screen.
Recently i visited a restaurant and they use iPad for ordering. When i tried to close the app by pressing the home button it did not close. Rather it blinked (may be went to background and came up again i don't know). then i was prompted for admin password.
But when i searched stack overflow most answers suggest that it is not possible. As per my understanding i can use development certificate and implement this in my personal device. May be the restaurant might have also done that.
Can someone shed some light on how to achieve this functionality?
You can put an iPad into Kiosk mode.
This will essentially lock it into a particular app with a pass key required to do anything else.
http://www.ipadenclosures.com/blog/posts/your-ipad-into-a-kiosk
This has nothing to do with objective-c. It's a feature on iPhones and iPads called Guided Access: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
There are a few ways you can do it - One of the simplest is through guided access
Another, even more secure, is through Apple Configurator - When you supervise a device you can lock it to one app and disable the controls just as with the guided access method. With this method you can supervise multiple devices and apply standard configurations quickly by simply plugging them into your Mac's USB port.
I am developing a business app for use on an iPad/iPod Touch. I am wondering if there is a way to restrict usage on the device to my app only. In other words, we don't want employees installing other apps such as games and playing around with the devices.
Yes, that's possible.
Check out the iOS Configuration Profile Programming Guide.
Edit: See the section about restrictions, it will allow you to do exactly what you need. Note however that you'll need to have access to those devices, ideally the devices should be company property. And you need to distribute your app via Enterprise Distribution.
Edit 2: Since iOS6, this feature is available through the normal settings app. It is called "Guided Access" and is part of the Accessibility settings. It will let you disable the home button (cancel guided access by triple-clicking the home button and enter the preset code) and it will even let you define areas within apps which should be disabled.
I don't think so, unless their device is jailbroken.
If they're logged into an Exchange server you could remote-wipe their phone if they install anything.
Do you provide the devices? Or they bring their own?
If you provide the devices that would mean you can use your Apple-id. If an employee would try to download any other app he would need the password of your Apple-id. So thats a simple way to prevent that.
Im am not sure if there is a total "lock" of such type.
I'm quite new at iOS app development.
I'm starting to work on an app that should in somehow be able to count the missing calls that the iPhone has registered since the app is running.
I've read that in no way Apple is going to let me intercept incoming calls, answer them, reject them, or "whatever" them, but I wonder if we are allowed to count them.
I've found some people that say it can be done (well, I knew it is possible, cause LockInfo does, for instance), but I don't know if it's attached to jailbroken iPhones only.
Anyway, as far as I have seen, it must be done with some methods related to kCTCallStatusChangeNotification from CoreTelephony.h if I'm right (as seen in http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2008/02/when-it-comes-to-the.html), but I coudln't find much more info about it.
Hello and welcome to iPhone Development! :) As you have already pointed out, you can be informed through a notification if a call is happening. Great! But here comes the dark side of iPhone Development:
That's the end of the road. 95% of the "Phone Functionality" of the iPhone is private API and you don't technically have access to it.
Of course, you could header-dump the private frameworks and use them anyway, but that will get your app instantly rejected from the AppStore, which wouldn't be fun for anyone.
LockInfo is an extension for jailbroken devices - those guys are known for not caring too much about Apple nor Private APIs ;) Also, as you may have seen, LockInfo isn't on the AppStore because it would've never made it that far.
So Apple, why is there CoreTelephony?
Well, it's there for some very specific reasons. I personally use it to obtain the carrier name of the device for certain country specific restrictions in my application. The notification you talked about, along with others, tend to be used by developers to prepare your app for going into an inactive state (when the call comes in, your app is put in the background), so its used to pause tasks etc... CoreTelephony has never been intended for any deep level access to the telephone system of the iPhone.
So sorry, you can't obtain the information you're looking for using public APIs.