Has anyone had luck with getting Ionic Deploy apps approved by Apple? Our app was previously accepted and we’ve been using hot deploys for a couple weeks, but our latest binary update was rejected:
Jan 31, 2017 at 12:43 PM
From Apple
4. DESIGN: PREAMBLE
Design Preamble
Your app includes an update button or alerts the user to update the app. To avoid user confusion, app version updates must utilize the iOS built-in update mechanism.
Please see attached screenshots for details.
Next Steps
Please remove the update feature from your app. To distribute a new version of your app, upload the new app binary version into the same iTunes Connect record you created for the app’s previous version. Updated versions keep the same Apple ID, iTunes Connect ID (SKU), and bundle ID as the original version, and are available free to customers who purchased a previous version.
Has anyone figured out how to deal with Apple on this?
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Apple is pulling the same thing with a very simple app we have just submitted for review. (the rejection reason was the same).
Design Preamble
_Your app includes an update button or alerts the user to update the app. To avoid user confusion, app version updates must utilize the iOS built-in update mechanism. _
Please see attached screenshots for details.
Next Steps
Please remove the update feature from your app. To distribute a new version of your app, upload the new app binary version into the same iTunes Connect record you created for the app’s previous version. Updated versions keep the same Apple ID, iTunes Connect ID (SKU), and bundle ID as the original version, and are available free to customers who purchased a previous version.
I have attempted to petition the rejection with (cr)apple but as expected, it leads back to the same “pre-canned” response (pasted above). Nevertheless it does amaze me how (cr)apple continues to hold its death grip on the throats the development community.
One can venture a guess that this is what happens when your company is nothing more than a giant marketing arm built upon overpriced hardware, drawing profit off the very backs of the community it charges to have the “privilege” to develop for them.
So, it appears as if apple is now rejecting apps that make use of the ionic package deployment approach, if I am incorrect and anyone has found a way to deal with this, please let me know. The ability to leverage the strengths of Ionic package deployment is something we would like to continue to be able to use for the ios platform.
Note: While Apple’s developer agreement fully allows performing over-the-air updates of JavaScript and assets (which is what enables CodePush or Ionic deploy!), it is against their policy for an app to display an update prompt. Because of this, we recommend that App Store-distributed apps don’t enable the updateDialog or show any update button option when calling sync, whereas Google Play and internally distributed apps (e.g. Enterprise, Fabric, HockeyApp) can choose to enable/customize it.
Thanks if that is the only route that we can go, then our code will be updated to remove the prompt when dealing with iOS
Hmm, if a OK / Cancel prompt is a no-go, I wonder if it’s acceptable to have a simple toast that says “update found, applying…” or similar.
Yeah they cant do anything with a toast. I have a toast. They are not complaining.
@siddhartha good to know!
are you using push notifications on IOS via GCM or FCM using the cordova push plugin?