Apple’s bitten by a bug?

Conclusion

I had been patient with Apple support very often and had no problem with their delay because in the end everything was fine. But this time they put developers out of sale for nearly a week without giving any information. That’s 1 week, a year has only 52 – that’s about 2% downtime, imagine you will get only half of your salary without previous notice?
This story was something different than normal support requests, it not only lets me wonder what happened but also makes me feel like someone unwanted on the Apple network. And I am paying to be a part of it!
I have requested more feedback and details within the last week still not getting any further response. Not a single word in response!
My relationship to Apple has been very much disturbed by this.

What options do I have? I’m bound to Apple for now:

  • My Apps are selling good on the App Store
  • new customers find them every day and buy them.
  • I make some money without doing any marketing.
  • I know how to handle most of the basic technical and store problems.
  • I can create new Apps with Apple Tools very fast.
  • I invested in learning Objective-C, XCode and dont want to throw that away
  • Existing Apps source code is not transferable to other platforms



But still, I don’t feel so good with Apple any more.
I don’t know if it is possible to make a real business with them, right now this looks more like gambling.

I got off lightly with 5 days having no real sales and a good spike in sales with a new App after everything came back. I don’t know how much the other developers might have lost in that time but I can tell you, a quarter of the months earnings is too much.
I don’t know if this might happen again because of a different problem and maybe be for a longer timeframe. I would have appreciated ANY feedback from Apple!

Well for what I have read in the forums, an unofficial statement of a forum moderator was: (quoted from the previously mentioned thread: https://devforums.apple.com/thread/54020?tstart=0)


[..]

The App Delete feature was temporarily turned off but will be restored in the near future. At that time, you’ll be able to delete any apps you need to. If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to contact iTunes Connect Support at www.apple.com/itunes/go/itunesconnect/contact us.

Thank you and thank you for your understanding.



Hopefully this provides more information…

In addressing the original issue of this thread, apps that were intentionally deleted may have also been restored. That’s what seemed to be the case for dev “VFR.” The original issue was resolved but we also wanted to assure any devs affected in the opposite way (e.g., having intentionally deleted apps reappear) that that issue is currently being addressed and they would soon be able to “re-delete” any apps they needed to.

Sorry for not tying the two issues together in my original post. Hope this helps explain a bit more.


Which explains a little bit but most of it is still unanswered and needs to be interpreted. Basicly it states that a bug in the new delete-function was responsible, didn’t they test it before it went online before a weekend and noone was available to fix it?
Don’t they also know they golden rule: “never go live before a weekend”

For now the updated App that triggered the bug is in the store after being offline for 5 days and is selling better than before. (finally some good news!)
Another new App was set to “Ready for sale” in the same time, being now in the top 10 of its category and loved by its users. (and better news! :)
The promotion that was scheduled on the first day of the bug was rescheduled without additional costs. (no lost money here)
Overall everything seems to be fine for now, but 5 days without sales, rankings and any visibility for possible customers still gives me the creeps.

I also see Apple people in the forums be helpful and responsive which gives me hope for the support. I will wait and see what happens in the next months, for now I at least know that the App Store can currently only be a playground for myself. I shouldn’t get to involved with it at this time.

In the meantime I have suggested a better support system using the bug reporter (yes, thats where enhancement requests are put into) by improving communication (do any at all!) and maybe create some kind of emergency support that is available 24/7.

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Published on 2010/06/21 01:23.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , ,

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Getting older XCode installs if you need them

Sometimes you need an older version of XCode because just after you simply upgraded to the latest version, you realize that some other software you are using is not yet compatible.

The AppStore or Developer Center only provide the latest version to you, so what now?

A little bit hidden in the not so visible download section you can still find old versions:

https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action

Published on 2012/03/09 19:30.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , ,

V8 vs. Spidermonkey

About a year ago I decided to go with v8js to use javascript code within php because it was so much easier to handle.

Today I benchmarked a problem related to the v8 engine and just out of curiosity I ran the same test with Spidermonkey.

A simple A/B Test:

  • A = define a JS Function and call it it in a loop
  • B = define a JS Function once and call it in a loop

The results for V8 were:

Runs 10 100 1.000 10.000 100.000
A 0.0048ms 0.0018ms 0.0159ms 0.4257ms 4.9063ms
B 0.0004ms 0.0011ms 0.0072ms 0.1733ms 1.8506ms

It was not really surprising that the one-time-definition was faster.
I tried exact the same with Spidermonkey:

Runs 10 100 1.000 10.000 100.000
A 0.0016ms 0.0276ms 0.2141ms 1.8415ms 18.483ms
B 0.0011ms 0.0039ms 0.0713ms 0.8591ms 8.4125ms


Huge difference compared to V8!


Here’s the test code:

V8 Test:


 0; $i-- ) {
$js->executeString($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
$js->executeString("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#1: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} with re-definition)";
unset($js);
$start = mstime();
$js = new V8Js('Test');
$js->executeString($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
for ( $i = $runs; $i > 0; $i-- ) {
$js->executeString("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#2: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} without re-definition)";
unset($js);
echo "

";
}
function mstime() {
list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime());
return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
}


Spidermonkey Test:


 0; $i-- ) {
$js->evaluateScript($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
$js->evaluateScript("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#1: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} with re-definition)";
unset($js);
$start = mstime();
$js = new JSContext('Test');
$js->evaluateScript($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
for ( $i = $runs; $i > 0; $i-- ) {
$js->evaluateScript("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#2: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} without re-definition)";
unset($js);
echo "

";
}
function mstime() {
list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime());
return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
}



Published on 2012/01/27 19:33.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

iOS 5 madness

I just wanted to share the following complaint:

WS only captures the visible part of the web page, the rest is blank.

Please fix this or I’ll have to write a scathingly negative review and give you zero stars.

(Running iOS 5 developer preview.)

Yours, [..]

Remember: iOS 5 is just a Developer preview right now (a few days old) and scheduled to be made public in the next months.

Published on 2011/06/14 19:14.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags:

Time Machine Interval

Time Machine is a great way to backup all files and restore to any point in time, by default it creates a new backup every hour.

Normally this won’t hurt the performance but if you have many small files on your disk or huge portions of your data change very often, it will slow down the whole system.

You can change the intervals to reduce the slowdowns. To backup only every 6 hours, open your terminal and:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 21600

The interval is in seconds.

To setup more sophisticated schedules you can also try a free tool called TimeMachineEditor (http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/).

Published on 2011/01/04 13:09.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

Archived Apps in XCode and where they are

Archived Apps in XCode are a great way to submit new versions to iTunes Connect because they are automatically grouped, tagged and re-signed in the process – you don’t need to manually find the compiled App, zip it & upload with the Application Loader.

If you start at a new Mac without data migration, you can simply copy the folder with all archived App versions to your new users library.

You can find it here:

/Users//Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Archived Applications


Or, if you develop at different Macs, symlink that folder to your Dropbox to have them accessible everywhere :-)

Published on 2011/01/04 12:44.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , ,

Analytics for iPad, Release 1.6

Today the 1.6 Update was submitted to Apple. Originally this update have been scheduled for the first week of November but was put on hold to be released with the iOS 4.2 version to have the least possible problems when everyone upgrades their iPad :-)

It contains only a few but very cool new features:


The new features are:

  • Support for Multiple Accounts – often asked for, here it comes!
  • Advanced Segments – take a better look at your reports by switching and comparing subsets of data
  • Open Reports in other Apps like iBooks – any App that supports PDF Files can receive reports for later usage
  • Print your Reports! – Support for AirPrint is now built in


Improved was the following:

  • The general speed of the website listing updates and report downloads was improved
  • Goals have now names instead of numbers


Also one bugfix is included:

  • Some users with special characters in their password had trouble logging in


In addition to the Update of the Free Version including its Premium Upgrade, there was also a full blown premium Version submitted to the store. That version is exactly the same but meant for everyone who has disabled In-App-Purchases and can’t get the premium upgrade.


2010/12/05 – Today the update hit the store, watch out for update notices in iTunes or the App Store to get it on your iPad!

Published on 2010/11/22 00:26.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags:

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