An iOS app you may spend few hours to make and release to the App Store
Have you heard, that something would take “few hours” for expirienced iOS developer to complete it (for example, an iOS app)? Or have you ever found it hard to explain someone, why “simply adding a button here” would take you few hours to finish? I bet, you have.
These statements and questions always puzzle me, and quite often I tend to think, “well, I am not an experienced iOS developer, hence, this is why”.
As a matter of fact, iOS apps take a lot of time to complete and many things in iOS development (not only there) require unspeakable effort to get them done. Moreover, this is all about solving unpredictable issues in unpredictable places, because you are dependant on things you are not responsible for, but ought to find the way out of.
And today, the major breakthrough! I’ve found a unit of measurement for “a few hours to complete an iOS app”. Please welcome Trollface Stickers!
Strictly speaking, it is an app extension, but what differs it from other extensions is, that it has respective App Store — first ever built by Apple — App Store for iMessage.
Since I saw the WWDC 2016 Keynote, where Apple introduced iMessage + Apps, I had begun thinking about possible app for that. The idea came from my own need: my friends and I like to exchange memes when a typical situation occurs in a conversation. Previously, it required to have respective pics stored in the Camera Roll or a folder on the Desktop. Now, it is able to have stickers right in place.
I spent two hours watching sessions #204 and #224 about iMessage Apps and Stikers. 2 hours straight was spent on browsing the Internet, searching for troll-faces with good quality, prefferable format (PNG) and required resolution. 3 hours of cropping and fixing (e.g. removing white background, where transparency was needed) resources in a photo editor. Eventually, 1 hour to make Stickers Pack in Xcode with all the prepared assets and icons.
Most of the work till the date was straightforward, and few minor issues that occured had been solved in several minutes. …until the Xcode GM release — a signal to submit the app for review to the brand-new App Store.
At first, I found out the application screenshots were required for the iTunesConnect record. It has sections for both, iOS app screenshots and iMessage app screenshots. Because, my app ran only inside the iMessage app, I submitted the same set of screenshots for both. The screenshots were done in 30 min, including reproducing the conversation between me and Max.
The problem appeared when I pressed “Submit For Review” button. iTunesConnect responded with this:
I double checked the Xcode 8 build number and it was OK. However, I failed to double-check macOS build. I didn’t pay much attention to it, because overnight I got an update to the latest beta revision. This little thing costs me 3 more hours of pocking around.
Someone on the Developer Forum had similar issue and suggested to re-create Stickers Pack target. Boy, I went more further to be 100% sure and re-done the Stickers Pack project from scratch entirely on Xcode 8 GM! Then, I though, Provision Profiles managed by Xcode were to blame. Do not ask me, why I though so. I can’t explain.
Eventually, I found out that macOS GM must be installed through promocode. When I did so, and re-built the app, submission went without any issue.
To summarize, 9 hours and I have an iOS app. Looks like “few hours” to me, doesn’t it? One could argue that most of the work is clearly for a designer, not for iOS developer, but in my case, someone had to do it. Sadly, this sometimes true even for commercial development.
Of course, next time, I would do similar work more quickly. This is who they call an experienced iOS developer 😂. Well, someday, I’d become the one. But now…
