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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 12:42 pm
 


$1:
The July 4th holiday has not been kind to Apple users and app developers. Starting late in the day on July 3, Apple began pushing out corrupt App Store updates that cause immediate app crashes. In effect, you launch your app, then — boom! — it dies.

Instapaper founder Marco Arment detailed the widespread issue, which is now affecting at least 73 major app titles, in a blog post Wednesday. The problem seems to be linked with Apple’s FairPlay DRM, a copy-protection scheme used for apps in the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, as well as videos and iBooks from iTunes.

Some of the apps currently affected by the issue include Angry Birds Space HD Free, Scanner Pro, GoodReader, and Instapaper.

“It seems that Apple’s FairPlay DRM mechanism wasn’t applied properly to the application packages that are delivered to users while downloading the update,” Scanner Pro’s Irene Chernyavska told Wired via email. “After the installation, the application doesn’t pass DRM validation and terminates immediately.”

If you haven’t experienced the bug yourself, here’s what’s happening: When you download the new version of an app, it crashes instantly upon launch (even after a complete reinstall). Those updating from iTunes may see error code 8324 or 8326 dialog boxes, and Mac apps may also show a warning that that the app is damaged and can’t be opened. GoodReader’s team believes the problem is primarily limited to people updating their apps via the App Store app.

“The only fix for people with bad copies, once good copies are being served again by the App Store, is to delete and reinstall the app,” Arment writes. He also cautions app developers not to push any app updates until the problem has been resolved on Apple’s end.

Crashing aside, the issue presents another big problem for developers: negative reviews and low ratings from angry App Store users. This can have lasting ramifications for the popularity of an app, and its standing in top app charts.

In Scanner Pro‘s case, the corrupt version of the app update was downloaded 113,000 times, and the team was subsequently deluged with angry e-mails, Facebook posts, tweets, and one-star App Store ratings. This app, which lets you create and store PDFs on the iPad, had an even worse problem, though: “The most terrible part was that some users were trying to resolve the issue by themselves and reinstalled the app without making a backup of files stored in Scanner Pro, and as a result lost a number of essential documents,” Chernyavska said.

The problem seems to be resolved for now — the Scanner Pro team has only received one support e-mail regarding the crashing issue in the two hours prior to this article’s posting.

“Yesterday it took up to several hours for some particular server to send users the proper update,” Chernyavska said. “It seems that once a proper package propagates through all servers, the issue will be gone.”

Update: Apple has acknowledged the problem, and it’s been resolved. Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told Wired, “We had a temporary issue that began yesterday with a server that generated DRM code for some apps being downloaded, it affected a small number of users. The issue has been rectified and we don’t expect it to occur again. Users who experienced an issue launching an app caused by this server bug can delete the affected app and re-download it.”


http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/ ... pp-update/

Hooray for DRM! [cheer]

[/sarcasm]


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