Plan for new App Release

digitaldan commented 5 months ago

Here's the latest news from Apple. I spoke with a developer support rep on Friday after months of back and forth emails. Basically, our watch ID has been claimed by another developer account, and they won't tell us who that is or reclaim it for us. Because of this, we can no longer push our app with watchkit support any longer as that ID can not be changed once published in the app store. This seems to be confusing to Apple as well as we have gone through several back and forth with tickets escalated to their dev team.

Our case is still open and i sent a fresh batch of error logs to them after trying a few changes they recommended, but i have little to no confidence now that Apple is going to be able to help.

My suggestion is that we publish this as a new app and new app ID into the app store. I would also like to then push an update to our existing app that will direct users to download the new app, maybe a simple popup that gets triggered at launch stating the issue.

see #746 for more history on this

Todo Items

[x] Branch the current released version (use openhab-legacy as the branch name)
[x] Create new Apple ID org.openhab.mobile.ios or equivalent ( lets discuss the best name to use here)
[x] Create new Watchkit ID
[x] Target IOS ~14~ 16 as min SDK level
[x] Remove openHAB 1.x / XML support
[x] Add FCM messaging to unify push notification code on cloud service
[x] Add a privacy manifest and update all 3rd party dependencies that require them as well

openHAB legacy changes

[x] Rename openHAB V1 app in code
[x] Replace logo with something slightly different then the current logo
[x] Remove watchkit from project (we can't push an update without doing this)
[x] Add Notification popup informing users of app change (we should talk about how this gets triggered and timing of app release, will want to have the other app live before this pops up so we have a link to it, maybe we make this dynamic with a server side API on openHAB cloud that returns the IOS app id, this actually already exists)

Deployment Todo

We need to work out timing. Ideally we would get the new app approved and published before renaming the current app and pushing an update to it. But we also don't want to be rejected by submitting an app first with the same name and icon (although i have seen this with other companies like solaredge who had two apps for a while)

[x] Publish new app to testflight, ensure messaging works
[x] Submit new app for review
[x] Submit old app for review (but do not have it auto publish, we want to do this manually)
[x] When new app is live, release openhab-legacy at that point

nelsonaponte commented 2 months ago

So i was thinking about something like this to message users to upgrade to the new app. Needs some UI formatting and cleanup, but you get the idea. I was thinking this would display when the app is launched, and is also available in the settings menu. The user has the option of not being reminded before dismissing.

@digitaldan, there are a few typos: "experince", "recomend", "IOS (iOS)".

digitaldan commented 2 months ago

What’s the status here?

I just need to find time to start the process. Once we submit, its going to be a lot of back and forth with Apple review team, as i'm expecting a lot of explaining about the two apps, and probably some changes we will need to make to logos, names, etc...

@digitaldan, there are a few typos: "experince", "recomend", "IOS (iOS)".

Are you going off the prototype screenshot, or the actual message in the resource files, which is different the what i posted above and is also translated into multiple languages?

nelsonaponte commented 2 months ago

I checked the screenshot. I couldn't find the actual resource.

digitaldan commented 2 months ago

Just an FYI i have submitted both apps for review. Our legacy/v1 app was approved shockingly fast. Its ready to release when we are ready. The new v3.0 app is in its second round of review, they apparently did not like having the string "iOS App" in the app description as in: "The Official openHAB iOS App" , apparently that's against the rules ??? Uhg 🤷 .

When our new app is ready, i will release the V1/Legacy app then so have both versions in the store at the same time. Once thats complete, i will update a string on our cloud service which will trigger the V1 app to notify users of the updated experience. 🤞

maxulm commented 2 months ago

Is the new app already on TestFlight?

Am 04.09.2024 um 00:22 schrieb Dan Cunningham @.***>:

Just an FYI i have submitted both apps for review. Our legacy/v1 app was approved shockingly fast. Its ready to release when we are ready. The new v3.0 app is in its second round of review, they apparently did not like having the string "iOS App" in the app description as in: "The Official openHAB iOS App" , apparently that's against the rules ??? Uhg 🤷 .

When our new app is ready, i will release the V1/Legacy app then so have both versions in the store at the same time. Once thats complete, i will update a string on our cloud service which will trigger the V1 app to notify users of the updated experience. 🤞

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digitaldan commented 2 months ago

Just an update, we were rejected again due to violating "Spam" polices, as I expected they don't like having 2 similar apps in the store. I have submitted our reason for exception to this policy, also pointing out other vendors like Sonos ( https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/sonos-inc/id293523034 ) who have similar V1 and V2 apps. I'll keep people up to date here as our submission progresses.

florian-h05 commented 2 months ago

IMO this is embarrassing from Apple’s side: First they “loose” the Apple Watch app ID and thereby force us to release a new app and then they make it difficult to release a new app … DX could be clearly better.

Thanks for the update though!

digitaldan commented 2 months ago

I'm shocked, but they accepted our new app and its ready to publish! I was 99% sure we were going to have a few more rounds of reviews, so that good news. I'll release it shortly, verify its available, then release the v1 app and do the same. Once thats done, i'll updated the current app version on the cloud service, which will trigger the V1 app to display the update message. I had originally thought Apple might have made us publish the legacy app first, hence wanting to delay the update message until the new one was published, but in hindsight, that was not necessary.

digitaldan commented 2 months ago

Both apps are out. I have submitted another version of the new app so i can change the name from "openHAB V2" to "openHAB". Apple would not allow the name change until our legacy app published and released the "openHAB" name (its now "openHAB V1") .

digitaldan commented 2 months ago

I am very, very happy to be able to close this issue. Both apps are released, with proper names, logos, etc.... Thanks everyone for helping out.

GeVaSta commented 1 month ago

Any idea if there are still plans to add svg support for the icons on an Apple Watch? Or should I open a new issue for this?

lsiepel commented 1 month ago

Any idea if there are still plans to add svg support for the icons on an Apple Watch? Or should I open a new issue for this?

Please create a new issue, as this is not specific related to this thread

openhab / openhab-ios

Plan for new App Release #756