Who does dev work on iOS out there?

[annathepiper]

For any of you developer types who have to work with iOS, I have a question for you!

Namely: Apple has this new system that asks sites to use appstore.com links if they want to direct people to the App Store for a company or app. So for example, we have http://appstore.com/bigfish which takes you to all the stuff in the iOS app store by Big Fish Games.

My question is this: what if you’re not on the US app store on your device? According to this article on the Apple Developer site, in theory what’s supposed to happen is that you get redirected to the app store for your country. But what I don’t know is whether this is actually the case, and what sort of magic Apple might be doing to actually make that determination.

On one of our test devices at work, I just tried to set its app store to German, but found that I still went to a list of English apps if I hit that link in Safari. I don’t know if appstore.com is doing some form of geoIP checking or what.

Anybody able to enlighten me one way or another?

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[lynnoconnacht]

On one of our test devices at work, I just tried to set its app store to German, but found that I still went to a list of English apps if I hit that link in Safari. I don’t know if appstore.com is doing some form of geoIP checking or what.

Anybody able to enlighten me one way or another?

What currency sign does it show for you in the app store? The interface language isn't irrevocably linked to location, so it's entirely possible to use an English-language interface for a German-region app store. If you're seeing the euro sign for app purchases, you should be good. Otherwise... I'm afraid I'm not sure what's going on, but I'd definitely recommend changing both your device's language settings and the account's language settings. I've forgotten which of the two determines the app store interface, sorry.

I hope it's still helpful, though!

[tckma.livejournal.com]

It's based on geolocation of your IP address. Mind you, this doesn't always work -- I can always tell when a site is doing IP geolocation by the fact that it thinks my work computer is in either Atlanta or Dallas. It's not. I'm in Maryland, but our company's network is such that I get an IP either in Atlanta or Dallas.

Try spoofing the IP address to something from Germany. Search for "IP Geolocation" in Google, because I don't remember prefixes and countries offhand.

[annathepiper]

I have the ModifyHeaders Firefox extension on my PC, so spoofing an IP addy on that box is easy. Not so much on the phone. o.O

We did an external-to-our-network check that confirms this behavior though, so I think we've got about as much data as we're able to get. Thanks for the confirmation, though, I appreciate it!