Has the app been taken down from the US store? None of our users can find it when clicking the link from the Ionic site.
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They sent out an email yesterday I believe where they said they had to take it down temporarily due to a feature being against Apple’s ToS. The email stated that they’ve already re-submitted an update that should be live Soon™.
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Matt here, the Product Manager for Ionic Pro. I’m sorry to say that Ionic View has been temporarily removed from the iOS App Store as of last night. I wanted to let you know why and how we’re working to make sure it’s added back as soon as possible.
What does this mean for the apps that I’ve shared through View?
Anyone who already has the View App installed will not be affected. So, people you’ve shared your apps with already, as long as they have already downloaded View, will continue to view and receive updates to your app as you share new versions. If you’re trying to share with new people, they will not be able to access View for iOS until it’s restored in the App Store.Why did Ionic View get removed from the iOS App Store?
Ionic View had a mechanism for Public sharing using QR codes and code input to provide testers with access to publicly shared apps. That sharing method was deemed against a statement in Apples ToS that doesn’t allow apps to use code input to access content (as opposed to authorization based access).How are we making sure View is back on the App Store soon?
In the very short term, we have already submitted a new version of Ionic View for iOS that removes the public sharing functionality from the app. Public sharing will still work on Android, but will no longer be available on iOS. This new version is awaiting Apple review.How will you bring back Public Sharing on iOS in the future?
We are currently having discussions with our team to determine the best way to add Public sharing back to View for iOS. We are most likely going to be moving forward with a variant of our Private sharing mechanism that would allow anyone to request access to an app via a special link you can share.I’m very sorry for this interruption to your use of Pro. We’re working feverishly to get the situation resolved, and will update as the process moves forward. We expect and hope that this will be resolved within a day or two.
Thanks for your understanding,
Matt
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(for the history, same as https://forum.ionicframework.com/t/ionic-view-is-not-available-in-app-store)
Thank you very much! Must have missed that email.
Guess what, the PhoneGap Developer App has been removed too
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I just switched over to Android a week ago. My timing couldn’t have been better. Apple is just rotten lately.
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Max wrote a blog post about the current status of this issue
https://blog.ionicframework.com/update-on-ionic-view-for-ios/
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Any update on this case?
Any thoughts on WHY Apple might be purging dev apps from their store? Is there some financial gain, as in developers might be forced to use xcode (buy a Mac) to test their apps while developing for iOS?
Edit: I see Apple has their own development app, TestFlight. That probably answers my question.
This whole deal with Apple simply adds more emphasis for PWA’s
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Yes, Apple want developers to use their own app TestFlight… and it requires us to pay $99 a year.
Apple is now behind Samsung and they want squeeze money from developers in a wrong way. They must realize this is terribly wrong and embarrassing.
I know. I had the account for a year. At risk of turning this into a gratuitous roast of Apple, I will say the hoops you have to jump through to get anything done with the dev portal setup / certificates once you pay that fee is incredibly frustrating as well.
Anyways, I hope they make some changes at some point to make it less of a migraine to create for them, for developers’ sake
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Yes, so far everything has been frustrating with Apple.
The worst case I’ve seen is a guy who purchased developer account in December 2017. He couldn’t get his account activated until the last April. and Apple didn’t do anything.
When they have no respect for people who are paying them, there’s no point in “keeping developers in their ecosystem” …
My suggestion for Ionic team is to move away from test app which should be downloaded and installed from apple app store.
I would recommend Ionic team to create online test system which can work on iOS devices regardless of Apple’s policy. The best way is bypassing App Store and not giving attention to poor Apple policy which is designed to harass developers.
What about creating an online app emulator that can be access from a browser?
That will solve all this Apple hassles for the next ten years.
Imagine a cordova software emulator which runs underneath browser…
Hi, is there any alternative for sharing the pre-release app with a client on IOS? What are other people doing at this time?
That wouldn’t work. The whole point of the View and Dev apps is that they include all the Ionic Native Cordova plugins so that apps can use native features in their apps even during testing. You don’t have access to those plugins via a web browser.
PWAs will eventually have access to some native features, but they will be much more limited then what you can accomplish with Cordova plugins.
At this point you basically have two options. Just roll the dice and release, hoping your internal testing caught most of the crucial bugs, or use TestFlight.
What if you create an emulator software which runs underneath a browser?
So imagine there’s a system which generates Android or iOS simulator per a client. It has all features like Android studio emulator.
And it allows users to see what’s going on in emulator through a browser.
Browser is merely a viewer in this case.
It’s not going to be fast but you can check all native functionality and bypass iOS certificate requirements.
Check this virtual browser generator:
There isn’t really a way to create a VM for iOS. You can run an emulator, but that requires a Mac. So lets assume there is some way to hijack the iOS emulator on a Mac and project it to a browser, you’d still need a huge server farm of Macs to accomplish it.
Unless Apple relents and allows View back into the store I think we’re going to be stuck with TestFlight.
Jailbroken iOS can run iOS app without Mac or certificate. So you can create virtual jailbroken iOS simulator that can be viewed from a browser. But I wonder if that’s okay with Apple.
Current iOS simulator doesn’t require certificate to run iOS apps.