Hello,
Is it possible to perform a check to see what the current version of the app is on the App Store? I want to make an alert that tells the user whether or not their version is up-to-date.
Thanks!
No, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. First if a new version is in the app store, they should get prompted to download the update. You don’t need to tell them. But if you insist, you could use push notifications and when a new version goes up live, you send a push message. Your second option is to have a web server somewhere hosting a small file that has the current live version number in it that you download whenever the app runs and checks it against an internal version number that you hard coded in.
But in reality, both are problematic. People will turn off push notifications if you annoy them with it and there is a good chance they may turn them off from the beginning, specially if it’s an app that doesn’t have a need to send push notifications. The other one is at least on iOS if you check at app start time, that app may sit there running in the background and never query your server. Or if you do it on every resume, then you may get a lot of traffic and be checking too frequently. But the real problem with the latter is if you go that route and you end up with an android version an iOS version and an Amazon version, you have to prepare for that and for them to be out of sync.
Personally I would just let the store/device manage it.
No, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. First if a new version is in the app store, they should get prompted to download the update. You don’t need to tell them. But if you insist, you could use push notifications and when a new version goes up live, you send a push message. Your second option is to have a web server somewhere hosting a small file that has the current live version number in it that you download whenever the app runs and checks it against an internal version number that you hard coded in.
But in reality, both are problematic. People will turn off push notifications if you annoy them with it and there is a good chance they may turn them off from the beginning, specially if it’s an app that doesn’t have a need to send push notifications. The other one is at least on iOS if you check at app start time, that app may sit there running in the background and never query your server. Or if you do it on every resume, then you may get a lot of traffic and be checking too frequently. But the real problem with the latter is if you go that route and you end up with an android version an iOS version and an Amazon version, you have to prepare for that and for them to be out of sync.
Personally I would just let the store/device manage it.
Hello,
Is it possible to perform a check to see what the current version of the app is on the App Store? I want to make an alert that tells the user whether or not their version is up-to-date.
Thanks!
Personally I prefer using the Scoreoid.net solution which is to use a notification server. The package is based on net requests for storing different types of data and highscores, so the notification is an ad-hoc service.
They have a webpage in which you can put up notifications and your app will call their server and fetch any active notification that it can then show. A new version, special offers or even ads can then be pulled from the server in the app (but no push).
Hello,
Is it possible to perform a check to see what the current version of the app is on the App Store? I want to make an alert that tells the user whether or not their version is up-to-date.
Thanks!
Personally I prefer using the Scoreoid.net solution which is to use a notification server. The package is based on net requests for storing different types of data and highscores, so the notification is an ad-hoc service.
They have a webpage in which you can put up notifications and your app will call their server and fetch any active notification that it can then show. A new version, special offers or even ads can then be pulled from the server in the app (but no push).
I just had my binary rejected, submitted March 1. The rejection reason was this:
10.6 Details 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.
This has never happened before on our two year old app, and I get no hits on the web at all for the exact text of the message, except in Chinese. Is it possible that there is a brand-new rule against having an update checking feature?
Apple changes the rules all the time. Asking the user to update the app is a rather unusual feature and I can see why they would not like this.
Rob
I just had my binary rejected, submitted March 1. The rejection reason was this:
10.6 Details 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.
This has never happened before on our two year old app, and I get no hits on the web at all for the exact text of the message, except in Chinese. Is it possible that there is a brand-new rule against having an update checking feature?
Apple changes the rules all the time. Asking the user to update the app is a rather unusual feature and I can see why they would not like this.
Rob