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Apple's developer center back online, again
"Here's where it all happens for Apple developers" reads the tagline, but that's not been the case for much of the last few weeks. This morning, Apple's advising that its developer centre is now fully restored, after being taken offline due to intruder attempts. Hopefully for real this time. In any case, Cupertino's offering up a month's extended membership in return for the inconvenience, as outlined in the official statement past the break. Now, back to it...
Daily Update for August 5, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple to restore most remaining Dev Center services this week
Apple and its developer community have had a few rough weeks: hackers struck Apple's Dev Center in mid-July, and the company's efforts to both recover and rejuvenate the portal have been slow going. Things are looking up, however, as the company just sent word that it will restore most of the remaining services this week. These will include crucial elements like enrollments and renewals, although Apple has already extended current developers' memberships to avoid interruptions. While there's still a few missing pieces, it's clear that developers can soon return to business as usual.
Talkcast tonight, 10 PM ET: Plastic iPhones, Dev Center woes, Beard
All-new dial-in experience! See below -- do not call into Talkshoe, we won't be there. Be sure to set up Fuze Meeting before the show if you want to join in live. Sheeeesh. Can you believe it's the end of July already? It's like we just went from June to August this year. Anyway, we're going to liven up the evening tonight with the usual TUAW Talkcast, this one with yours truly hosting and with The Loop's Jim Dalrymple (AKA The Beard) as our special guest. Topics will include the continuing rumors about low-cost plastic iPhones, the return of the Dev Centers, and probably some banter about the Apple Q3 financials. All this, and your comments and calls -- what more could you ask? Join us at 10 pm ET/7 pm PT, and we'll have a grand old time. Reminder on new-style talkcasting: With some help from the fine folks at Fuze, we're using a new system to record the show. This should let everyone listen in live -- and, if you want, raise your hand as you would in the Talkshoe room to get unmuted and chime in. You can join the call in progress (meeting # is 20099010) at 10 pm ET from any computer via this link; if you download the Mac or Windows Fuze clients ahead of time, you'll get better audio and a slicker experience, but browser-only will work fine. Just click the phone icon to join the audio once you're in. Using an iPhone or iPad? Grab the native clients from the App Store and get busy. (Even Android users can join the party.) Still feel like using the conventional phone dial-in? Just call 775-996-3562 and enter the meeting number 20099010, then press #. While the Fuze web and native clients have a chat channel, we'd like to reserve that for host participants, requests to talk and other real-time alerts... so the full-on chat for the show will appear in this very post at 10 pm tonight. You'll need Twitter, Facebook or Chatroll credentials to participate in the chat. We'll remind everyone to check back in at that time. Your patience and forbearance with our new tech is appreciated in advance. For the time being, the podcast feed of the show will continue to originate from Talkshoe and should be there within 24-36 hours. See you tonight!
iOS, Mac and Safari Dev Centers back up and running as of 6:15pm EDT
See those green boxes above? That's good news for iOS and Mac developers, as well as those who write extensions for Safari. Apple's Developer System Status page is now showing that the iOS, Mac and Safari Dev Centers are up and running again after an week-long outage. Apple's developer sites were taken offline more than a week ago in response to a security issue that may have exposed the names and contact information of some developers. Apple has stated that no application code, credit card numbers or other privileged information was exposed, and the company has been working to harden the systems since then. In addition to those welcome green boxes, the status page also shows that the all-important Certificates, Identifiers, and Profiles page is back up, and Software Downloads are ready for those of us who need to restore our iPhones to iOS 7.
Apple's developer center comes back online after weeklong overhaul
While most of you are fixing to shut things down for the weekend, Apple's developer portal is waking up after a weeklong hiatus. If you'll recall, Apple affirmed that its dev center was hacked last week while simultaneously announcing a system overhaul. Now, however, things seem to be back in action, with little to no consumer-facing changes to the site itself. If we had to guess, we'd say the bulk of the tweaks have happened behind the scenes. With that, we invite you to return to your regularly scheduled coding.
Microsoft posts Dev Center app for Windows Phone, tops 130,000 total apps
Despite launching the Windows Phone Dev Center months ago, Microsoft hasn't provided an option to run the dashboard on Windows Phone itself. The company is at last introducing some logical consistency (and recursion) by launching a Windows Phone version of its Windows Phone developer console. The app lets registered creators track downloads, crashes and feedback without turning to a computer, and a Live Tile can sometimes save the trouble of launching the app in the first place. Having the Dev Center always on hand may be increasingly necessary, based on Microsoft's own figures -- the Windows Phone Store is up to about 130,000 apps, or 10,000 more than it had in December. That's not quite the breakneck pace of other mobile stores, but it's quick enough to justify hitting the download link.
Microsoft opens Windows Phone Dev Center, limits in-app purchases to Windows Phone 8 (update: store rebrand too)
It's a day of mixed blessings if you're a Windows Phone developer. The upside? Microsoft has shelved its old App Hub in favor of the heavily reworked Windows Phone Dev Center: along with being simpler and more reliable, it now lets app designers offer their apps in four times as many countries (three times as many for paid apps), gives them better tracking tools and lets them at last get payment from Microsoft through PayPal. We hope they aren't making too many grand plans to bring Microsoft's newly added in-app purchasing support to every title, however. The counterbalance in this story is confirmation in the Dev Center that any in-app commerce will be limited to Windows Phone 8 -- even devices running Windows Phone 7.8 will have to turn to all-or-nothing transactions to directly generate cash. While we can't say we're surprised, knowing that Microsoft hadn't mentioned legacy support before, the news no doubt dampens the enthusiasm for developers who now need to wait for a wave of new devices before they can join the freemium app gold rush. Update: WMPowerUser noticed something in that tiny text on the home page -- the artist formerly known as the Windows Phone Marketplace is now the Windows Phone Store. A small (and still unacknowledged) change, but notable for harmonizing the mobile app shop with the Windows Store on the desktop.
iOS 4.2.1 gold master posted to Apple developer center
We're inching ever closer to the public release of iOS 4.2 for iPad, people! Apple's developer center just posted build 8C148, listed as iOS 4.2.1 GM (gold master). Does this mean we're getting iOS 4.2 tomorrow? We'll keep refreshing our iTunes update screens and running our shell scripts -- as soon as we see the new version drop, we will let you know. [via MacStories]
iPhone dev center down today
Developers who try to log into the iPhone dev center, the Mac dev center or iTunes Connect this afternoon are being greeted with the traditional yellow sticky note or the Sorry! note above, indicating that some sort of update effort is underway. With the on-again, off-again release of the 3.2 beta 3 version of the SDK in late February, and the unconfirmed-but-likely launch of the iPad on March 26th, no surprise that there are fixes and finish to take care of on the site. When it comes back up, we'll let you know; if you spot anything of consequence when it does, please let us know. Update: It's back up. The big news is on the Mac side, with the introduction of the $99 price point for ADC membership.
The iPhone Devcenter is down... and now, back up
Update 11am ET: Logins appear to be working again for the iPhone Dev Center, at least from the East Coast. If you're still having trouble logging in, try using Firefox rather than Safari. Still hearing reports of intermittent issues (Namely "Can't connect to application instance") Isn't it weird that Apple has taken down the iPhone devcenter a day before their big "newest creation" announcement? Normally we expect site outages on the day of announcementpalooza, not the day before. Maybe it's a maintenance/infrastructure thing that needs to go live and be tested before the big day. Maybe it's 3.2. Maybe it's an attack of rainbow unicorn puppy dog devs. We don't know. All we know is that the site has been down since about 5AM Eastern. (I write this at about 10:30 Eastern). iTunes Connect remains unaffected by this outage.
Xcode Tip: Updating your documentation
It appears that the Dev Center at Apple just updated its documentation set today. If you're using Xcode 3.2 and you want to update your documentation, you might be looking in the wrong place. Before 3.2, you used to update your documentation in the Developer Documentation window (Help > Developer Documentation, or Command-Option-?). Now you'll find your documentation sets in the Xcode Preferences window (Xcode > Preferences... or Command-, and then choose the Documentation tab). Also, if checked, Xcode will automatically update your documentation when you launch it. This Documentation panel offers subscription options for installing a documentation set (such as, for example, Mac OS X Legacy Library or iPhone OS 2.2 Library) as well as a handy Check and Install Now button that lets you request the latest updates. Use this to keep on top of the latest documentation updates. Thanks, Scott Lawrence and @zadr
Apple adds queue time, contact info to iPhone developer pages
Small steps: reports from several iPhone developers indicate that Apple has showcased two key features on the Dev Center website that may improve the mood and attitude of anxious app submitters. Feature #1 is a queue status graphic (seen here), letting everyone know how long the approval wait should be -- like the line signs at Walt Disney World, only far geekier.Feature #2 is the presence of a new 'all issues' escalation email address, so developers with urgent bug fixes that need to be prioritized can get their questions answered -- something that the Iconfactory's Craig Hockenberry specifically asked for in his wrapup of the 1st-anniversary state of the store. This email channel has apparently been open for a week or two, but is now being publicized on the front page.Several other tips & suggestions posts have also been updated in the past 24 hours, including notes on the keywording/tagging options and walkthroughs on changing your app name and assigning/adjusting the app's rating. If you're a registered developer, swing over to the Dev Center and take a look.[via the delightful Nik Fletcher]
iPhone Dev 101: Introduction
Welcome to the iPhone Dev 101 series. This series on TUAW is designed to tell readers about iPhone development, and give potential iPhone developers a look at the iPhone. In this introductory post, I'll walk you through some of the most asked questions about the iPhone & App Store. These posts will be a little geeky, but I will try to explain anything that you might not already know about. Where do I start?If you already have an Apple ID (either from iTunes/MobileMe/.Mac/etc.), then the first place to start would be to join the iPhone DevCenter. The basic (free) access will allow you to download the SDK (Software Development Kit), look at documentation, download example code, and test your applications in the iPhone Simulator (a Mac application that emulates the iPhone OS). You will not be able to test and debug your application on your actual iPhone or iPod touch hardware, however. For that you will need to purchase a paid development membership. Once you attempt to sign in to the DevCenter with your Apple ID, you will be presented with some terms and conditions that you will need to accept. Once you accept them, you will be taken to the main DevCenter -- this is the place where you will be able to download the SDK and access some other important information about iPhone development. Read on to learn more about iPhone development.
Move from .Mac to Google
The MacDevCenter's Matthew Russell has penned a great post about moving your email, address book, and calendar from .Mac to Google's offerings. Why would you want to do this? Well, we have talked about .Mac on TUAW before and most of what we have said isn't too rosey. Google has many offerings that best .Mac and they are free compared to $99 a year.As Matthew points out, you are putting a lot of trust into Google to keep these services free (you might recall that .Mac was free with the OS for awhile as well) but if you're looking for a .Mac alternative this article makes moving to Google easy.
