Avoid security breach through iTunes Connect

Are you a user of AppAnnie or AppFigures or any service that depends on Apple's iTunes Connect as their data data source? If you answered yes, then you must follow Marco Arment advice: create a specific user for these service instead of giving them your own iTunes Connect credentials. The problem is if those services are compromised and then your iTunes Connect credentials could be at risk. Instead of using your main iTunes Connect user to get access to sales reports, why not create a specific user for this task with much less power. iTunes Connect provides a granular user role definition, use it!

Update on Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 9:03 by JF Martin

Yesterday I created a new Apple ID in order to be able to create a new iTunes Connect account with access to sales reports only. I made that in order to be more secure about my Apple ID following a lock for unknown reasons last week. Meanwhile, the same day, I received an email from AppAnnie that basically says:

Some users' Apple ID accounts has been locked, we don't really know why but are looking into this with the help of Apple. By the say, it was a good idea to use a seperate iTunes Connect account for the sales reports download.

This is interesting. We don't really know what happen or if any data has been compromised... AppAnnie will be resuming the iTunes Connect data scrapping gradually in the next few days... stay tuned. 

ITC Status Reports arrival times

Want to now about iTunes Connect (ITC) reports arrival time? Look no further than AppFigures reporting page which is awesome.

Asking Apple for expedited application review - my little story

Last week, I had to push an update to Ultimate Password Manager in order to fix a nasty bug introduced by a previous release. Users were mad and wanted a quick fix. So, when submitting my app to Apple for review, I decided to ask for an expedited review because at the time I had to submit my app, I had to expect a week delay.

Here is how it works. First, you must have submitted your application new version before requesting an expedited review. Then you login on iOS dev portal, on the App Store Resource Center on the right side of the page, you'll see a mention "Contacting the App Store Review Team". You then select "Request an expedited app review".

According to the description, only ask for expedited reviews when you really need it. 

So I set my request type to "Critical Bug Fix" and then typed the following reason for request then hit submit. 

My new version was submitted on June, 6th at 10:53 PM. It took Apple a little bit less than four days to start the review process. Then, within about an hour the application was ready for sale. It took another 3 hours before the application started to appear in the App Store. 

The review process took a little bit less time than what it took for the preview version. My point is, four days to push a quick fix to the users isn't fast enough. I don't know if this is because everybody at Apple was at the WWDC in a way or another but I find it to be too long to wait as I asked for an expedited review. 

Mopapp - a multi-platform mobile sales analytics

The list of mobile application sales analytics on the web keeps growing. You certainly know about AppFigures or AppAnnie.  I wrote a review of those in Building iPhone Apps: Comparing appFigures and AppAnnie - Updated.

Now here is Mopapp. Mopapp is a multi-vendor mobile sales analytics which I find kind of nice looking. As an iOS developer, what I'm concerned about is how iTunes connect sales reports are processed and presented. Has the data is the same for all analytics services, the only differentiation factors will reside mainly in presentation and support for other mobile platforms.

On the presentation side, the dashboard offers filtering options by application, device, countries and the like which is nice for some drill down on your data. I think I prefer their graphics over AppFigures's or AppAnnie's one.

The other thing about Mopapp is its broad mobile platform support. This is where it shine. If you sell apps on the App Store, Android market and the like.

While testing the service, I found it to be fast and reliable. Setup was a breeze and analytics started to appear after a few minutes only of usage. The service is currently free while in beta but four pricing plans will be offered once the service leave beta status.

iTunes Connect icon rendering

When you post an update of an application on iTunes connect, you first add a version. When doing that, you are asked about different informations and at some point you'll upload your iTunes Artwork. Before submitting the actual application binary, iTunes Connect will always render the iTunes Artwork with a glossy look like this (on the right).

The problem with this is that it may render a particular icon design ineffective. In my case, the icon looked way much lighter than I wanted to. When you upload application from Xcode's Organizer, iTunes Connect will interpret the info.plist key "Icon already includes gloss effect". If the value is yes, this will in fact disable the iTunes Connect's own rendering and the icon will look as expected.

Use UIFileSharingEnabled with caution

My application was rejected by Apple yesterday night because I was using the UIFileSharingEnabled flag in the application's info.plist file. The reason it was enabled was during the development process, I was using iTunes file sharing to see when files were saved into the /Documents directory. I was suspecting a problem with data saving in the app and I wanted to look at it. I forgot to disable the option before submitting my application to Apple.

Here is part of the response that I've got from Apple:

Ultimate Password Manager has the UIFileSharingEnabled key set to true in the Info.plist, but files not intended for file-sharing are contained within its Documents folder.

When file sharing is enabled, the entire Documents folder is used for file sharing. Files that that are not intended for user access via the file sharing feature should be stored in another part of your application's bundle. If your application does not require the file sharing feature, the UIFileSharingEnabled key in the Info.plist should not be set to true.

For the next release, I'll have to remove the internal data files from this directory and put them somewhere else because I'll include a new import / export feature of the passwords and they will be put there. Obviously I'll have to re-enable the file sharing option so the user can get access to the exported files.

Question for you: where can I store my .xml files other than in /Documents directory while keeping iTunes to backup these files when doing a device sync with the computer?

Minimum required iOS version

On the eve of uploading a new version of Ultimate Password Manager to the App Store, I'm trying to search on how do we set the minimum iOS version required. The reason is that  UPM 3 won't run on iOS 3 from now on. The thing is, when the user get an update on his or her device, there is two things that can happen.

The first scenario: the user tap the application in the updates list and see the what's new text then hit the "Free" button. I could write a first line comment of this nature: "WARNING: iOS 3.x users, DON'T UPGRADE! Ultimate Password Manager 3.0 is for iOS 4.x users only. iOS3 is not supported. If you upgrade, the application won't load. "

The second scenario (the worst): the user hit the "Update All" button, Ultimate Password Manager is downloaded then installed on the unsupported device without any warning. The user is not happy. This is the worst case scenario as the user cannot see the warning.

Using Xcode Base SDK setting (which must be always at the highest level) and Deployment Target at the minimum targeted iOS version required (in my case this is iOS 4.0) doesn't solve the problem; it seems that setting the Target at iOS 4 will set for us an info.plist key called "MinimumOSVersion". iTunes Connect don't seems to take this into account and while uploading a new binary, there is no place to set a similar value. So I'm stuck with a potential problem for my users. What can I do about it?

First, on the application's web site that the user can visit from the app, I can write a post about the minimum requirements for the upcoming release. Diligent users will get the message. 

Second, on the application's marketing web site we can add a similar note. But, I fear this isn't enough to prevent iOS 3.x users upgrade to UPM 3.0. And it seems this is as far as I can get to warn my users. 

Comparing appFigures and AppAnnie - Updated

Since the launch of the App Store, because of the lack of processed informations on application sales from Apple, many sales analytics services  went online. One of the first that I started to use was www.appfigures.com. Then another one went on called www.appannie.com. In this blog post, I want to put them side by side and tell what are their respective strengths.

Update: someone reading my blog post sent me a tip asked me to give a look at Distimo Monitor. Scroll down to the end of this post to see what I found out.

What I like about AppAnnie:

• Global view on user reviews count... easier to keep track of the reviews globally
• Better visual organization (vertical split view)
• New user comments included in the daily email reports
• Current trends in the App Store with the Top 5 Matrix - so in gives a more global view of the current trends in the App Store, not just your own apps
• Indicator about which application is featured in which store - nice to know as it may explain sales peek
• Graphs are not based on Flash player to display
• More complete historical ranking information like Highest Ranks, Highest Grossing
• Cheaper - currently in beta - free

AppAnnie graph look

What I prefer from AppFigures:

• Ranking graphs seems constantly more up to date
• Daily email reports are well organized
• There is an API, and an iOS app is already available on the App Store (but it needs a lot of refinements) - AppTrends (iTunes link)
• Ability to export to Excel a few tables
• Add events overlay to the graphs to correlate promo events with actual sales
• More charting options (line, bar, cumulative)
• Sales reports are available earlier (because of higher processing power?)
• Overlay option of ranking information on top of sales
• Translation of user reviews (!)

AppFigures graph look

Distimo Monitor was unknown to me up to now. I've setup my account for testing and comparison purposes. Since nearly a week of using the service, here are my findings.

• This service is really multi-platforms: Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and Ovi stores are all supported. 
• Events from the App Store (like an updated version of your app) can be shared on social network like Twitter, which is a nice addition compared to other services.
• The general look of their Dashboard is more technical, presentation is nice but not as refined as AppFigures or AppAnnie.
• Report allows far more and better reporting customization which can be saved as presets. This is one of their distinctive strength I would say.

I'l keep you posted on any new findings regarding these services.

Based on this, I hope you'll be able to make a better decision when time comes to choose between those two app sales analytics services. Any experience you want to share about one of those? Post a comment!

Featured, but where?

I made a little discovery today with www.appannie.com. When looking at my dashboard, I found out about one of my app being featured by Apple in the Canadian App Store.

Problem is, I've search on the iPhone and on the computer for Productivity apps / What's Hot and did not find my app featured at all. May be this is one of those "lagging behind updates from satellite iTunes Connect web site problem". So I missed it. Now that I'm no longer featured anywhere, we'll see how it affect sales.

Pending Developer Release

I really like this iTunes Connect feature where a developer can decide when to actually release an application following Apple's approval. For the next release of my application, I decided to hold it because I didn't want the application to go live while I cannot update my www.tinysofty.com.

Now it is my turn to release it.

Now let see how long it take to become Ready For Sale.