False App Store Updates?

[anyjungleinguy]

In a few tweets between iOS developers, one developer noted that their app, along with many others, were missing their launch screen images (the image that's displayed when the app is launched but before it's actually loaded) due to a fault in the way Apple's system generated the different app thinning variants (including the "no thinning" variant).

Apple appears to have realised that the launch images were being incorrectly removed and has rebuilt all of the affected app's variants, pushing them out again. So the version number of the apps are identical, but now the apps correctly have their launch images.

That's some nice research. Thanks for sharing.

 

[dearfriendx]

Happened to me as well. The apps didn't really install and have the new features promised in the notes. Same versions came up today and redownloaded and now have the new features

 

[jrajpaul]

After updating all my apps, I no longer experience the slight lag when tapping on the app icon.

 

[friednoodles]

That's some nice research. Thanks for sharing.

And it seems it wasn't only the launch images that were an issue with the app variants, they were also causing problems with iOS 9 backups. Here's the info directly from Apple. Apple's disabled app slicing for now and will reenable it in a future update:

https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=092415a&1443125762

And a support document about how this has been impacting iOS 9 backups:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205268

"We reprocessed the impacted apps and made updated versions of them that are available for customers."

 

[beany boy]

I'm actually still having some problems with this on a more limited basis. I called Apple Care and well if ignorance is bliss these people are probably the happiest people in the world. I'm tired of this happening on my iPhone 6+ and on my 2 iPads.

 

[orbital~debris]

Noticed what seems to be the same issue happening over the last couple of days on the U.K. iOS App Store.

Only noticed because the release notes for an ‘updated’ app mentioned support for the new iPhone screen sizes, yet it didn’t fill iPhone X display. Looking closer, the app updated was dated 2 years ago.

 

[FeliApple]

Noticed what seems to be the same issue happening over the last couple of days on the U.K. iOS App Store.

Only noticed because the release notes for an ‘updated’ app mentioned support for the new iPhone screen sizes, yet it didn’t fill iPhone X display. Looking closer, the app updated was dated 2 years ago.

"iOS apps are getting updates because of LLVM’s Bitcode

Example: a 2 year old build gets recompiled on Apple’s server because of some new compiler optimization and becomes available in the App Store without any action from the developer"
That's what a developer said on Twitter about this issue. I'm not a developer, have no knowledge about this, so all I can do is quote.