Not Crashing, Hanging
I posted previously about the frustrating experience of having an app in the app store crashing and having no way to find out why.
Then I posted about HockeyApp and an apparent happy ending. My apps aren't crashing and everyone should be happy, right?
Not so fast.
Resume Designer hangs for some users when they try to send mail.
It doesn't crash, so I don't get a crash report.
And it doesn't happen for every user. The app store reviews of the app are proof of this. There is almost equal number of happy 5 star reviews as there are angry 1 star reviews.
Rebooting the iPad seems to fix the problem, at least, it did for the two users who contacted me directly instead of heading back to iTunes to vent via the 1-star reviews.
It should be impossible for the system to get into a state where a user needs to reboot to use a feature of my app, but that is what is happening. This makes me suspect an iOS bug.
I submitted a bug report to Apple, and they asked me for repro steps and device logs. Of course I don't have any, because I have never seen the problem on my own devices.
I've opened a case with Apple DTS (using one of the two free support incidents we get every year as part of registering for the developer program); I'm hoping that I will get to talk to an Apple engineer who has at least heard of the problem and might have a suggested workaround.
Let's assume for a minute that I do come up with a fix for this. What happens then?
My app's reputation has been pretty seriously damaged by this. Lots of one star reviews that would scare away any purchaser diligent enough to read the reviews. The only thing saving me at the moment is that my competition's apps have bad reviews as well, but still, that's not where I want to be.
I supposed could pull the app, rebrand it, and submit it as new. I don't like that option, and I'm not even sure it's permitted by Apple's rules.
I could wait it out. Eventually the good reviews will win out. That's an expensive option given the sales I'm losing in the meantime.
I'm not sure what I'll do yet, but what matters first is figuring out what is going on here and getting it fixed.