“The Application “Application Name” was not installed on the iPhone “iPhone Name” because it could not be verified.”

I seem to have the worst luck with creating ad-hoc-provisioned iPhone apps. Fresh from discovering this when trying to release the last beta version of my app, I was hit with another problem with the same outward symptoms this time. Here it is, for web-posterity too, in the hope that it may save others from the hours of frustration and completely unnecessary futzing with certificates, keys, and the iPhone Program Portal site:

Don’t have files with colon characters (‘:’, displayed as ‘/’ in …

John Gruber’s latest post, “Private”, calls Erica Sadun to task for her invention of a distinction between “private APIs” and “unpublished API’s”.  I completely agree.  The distinction is nonsensical.

On technical grounds, of course, it’s a valid distinction, if not a valid characterisation.  Her “unpublished” APIs are APIs that are available in public frameworks, but not documented in the headers.  Her “private” APIs are APIs in private frameworks (i.e. those with no headers, installed in the “PrivateFrameworks” directory, as opposed to the “Frameworks” directory).

There’s also a distinction from a programmer-level point of view.  It’s much easier to use a …

“The Application “Application Name” was not installed on the iPhone “iPhone Name” because it could not be verified.”

For web-posterity, a small thing I discovered: If your iPhone app beta testers are getting this error (probably along with an “ApplicationVerificationFailed” message from iTunes in the console), it’s possibly because you used command-line ‘zip’ to compress your app file, and it clobbered the symlinks within it, rendering the signature invalid.

If want to use command line zip to compress signed iPhone apps, you need to use the -y flag to get it to preserve symlinks.

In which a semi-automated system for the versioning of iPhone applications is detailed. Said system ensures that the reader’s apps are always correctly versioned, and his users’ iTunes applications are never confused by an update of his beta builds.

Versioning your iPhone applications properly ensures that your app updates go smoothly, and also that when you make a beta build testers never get into the frustrating state where iTunes refuses to accept it because of versioning conflicts, leaving them to have to delete the older version, and its settings and documents along with it.

The system presented here is largely inspired …

In which a category allowing the creation of UIImages from Unicode characters, suitable for use as Tab Bar icons, is created, but a state of mild displeasure at the implementation of said category is engendered.

Adding a ‘test’ tab to my in-development iPhone app, I had a dilemma. My troublesome aesthetic sense was telling me that, despite being seen by no-one but me, it needed a good looking icon. My sense of efficiency, though, was telling me “No! Don’t spend the…