Hi there,

I REALLY don’t know what happened yet. There’s no information or email from Apple. They seemed to have just pulled Rooms from all stores in the world without any hint or reason…

In the last update – which also fixed its compatibility against iOS 4.0+ – I removed all private API calls as requested by Apple. Some customers got mad because it now didn’t stay connected anymore like it did for ages, BUT I did what Apple requested me to do. So still using private API calls can not be the reason…

I wouldn’t even have noticed it until now, if a customer wouldn’t have sent me an email regarding this, after he tried to reinstall Rooms after he updated his phone! (THX Brad!)

iTunes Connect just says that its “Removed from Sale”. I’ve already sent an email questioning what had happened. Stay tuned!

This cannot be the normal way Apple pulls an app, hm? Just delete, no info, no nothing? And even IF I had gotten an email AFTERWARDS, this would be ridiculous not just telling me before, what exactly is wrong and needs to be changed… :-/

*I HOPE IT IS JUST A DREAM* (or at least just a little mistake)

[update]

OMG! Thats even worse… Just realized the datetime information on iTunes connect. They removed it  14. Juli 2010, 17:40 Cupertino time (PDT)! Already a full day gone and NO INFO? This is ridiculous!

[/update]

[update2]

… finally it IS a mistake. Not “really” on Apples end, but not really on mine either.
iTunes Connect says my ‘Distribution Certificate’ is still active until next year BUT somehow my so called ‘Distribution Provisioning Profile’  has expired and seems to be the reason. I now try to fix this ASAP and I’m glad that I could quickly find the reason with some help from the lovely Erica Sadun (THX for the hint!).

But still, I don’t see why NOTHING reminded me or even showed me a hint on the Provisioning Portal main page, XCode or somewhere else… And why the heck just the profile expired…
So I REALLY beg Apple to fixes iTunes Connect and stuff sometime. That not the first time I ran into bugs or issues on there and really hurts business on some days

[/update2]

Resumé:

I just went down all the way what seems to have happened and here’s the result:

By the time I updated Rooms for the 4.0 to fix those issues back then I renewed my ‘Distribution Certificate’ too, since it was about to expire some months later (now!). At this time there was NO hint that I then still need to “update” my Distribution Provisioning Profile too. Updating here means: Editing it, making no changes, saving it… oO

And because within the Profile Page there was no hint too, that its still using an expired certificate, I just went to download it, cleared my XCode profiles and put the new downloaded profile in there… Then I went on to compile the app, put it in the Store for update review and all seemed fine and the update got through.

Now someone could say, that XCode reminds me some days before this profile will expire… Yep it should… But first I would have to ask if I really would need to check every fucking day on the XCode Organizer if it will expire in some days?
And in my case I just cleared my profiles some days after the update got through to reinstall my dev tools, because one of the beta SDKs just had an installer issue some time before (which they pulled just 2 minutes after I had installed it hrhr)
And since I didn’t need the disti profile yet again, I didn’t download it into XCode until today…

But finally the ‘why’s :

Sure, I COULD have noticed it all somehow. But to be honest, it sucks!

What’s the problem with just showing some hint on certificate renewal. Or some hint on downloading the Profile later, when its using a certificate which isn’t there anymore.
Or why  not just automatically send an email to the dev one or two weeks before the app will be pulled AUTOMATICALLY?
Or why not AT LEAST send an automated email afterwards? The pull was clearly automated too, right?

What now?

Now it seems that I really need to send in an update again (even if it wouldn’t have any updates – gladly it will have though) and this may take some days/weeks now (hopefully not!)
So just another “why”: Why not just resigning the app on certificate renewal or something? (k, maybe THAT’s technically not possible here, but anyway, just for a last little why…)

Stay tuned!

Regards
Björn