Apple is facing a new kind of drama this week, outside courtrooms this time. Many users, who downloaded the app Instapaper 4.2.3 earlier this week from their App Store, found that it crashed on opening. Even uninstalling and reinstalling a clean version didn’t seem to work. On being bombarded with complaints about this issue, Marco Arment, the devloper of this app, contacted Apple and found that a corrupt update had been uploaded by the techno-giant onto their App Store and that the copy he had sent them was perfectly fine. He was also quoted saying that he wasn’t sure whether Apple fixed this glitch because of his complaints or whether the problem just sorted itself out as time passed. The latter, he said, could be possible if for instance the cache with bad data had expired.
On further investigation by the company, it was found that Apple had recently made some changes in its app distribution system, which was causing these glitches. An Apple spokesperson confirmed this, saying that the server had generated a DRM code for some apps that were being downloaded by people. This resulted in the customers receiving a damaged binary which didn’t start after updating the apps on their devices.
They also said that this issue has now been fixed and that they don’t expect it to repeat in the future. Also, customers who faced this problem due to the server bug should simply delete the affected app and re download it from the App Store. Apple also told app developers that if customers contacted them with problems, they should directly get in touch with Apple so as to figure out if the problem lies with the App Store or with the app itself.
The Instapaper wasn’t the only app that faced this problem. Similar issues were found with apps like Angry Birds Space HD Free, Pinball Maniacs, and GoodReader. Infact, the GoodReader makers also reported this issue on their website saying that this was probably due to Apple’s changed server which seemed to be distributing bugged binary codes to customers.
However, the extent of this issue is still unclear. Many apps seem to be working just fine on the iPhone as well as iPad. It is still under dispute whether the issue had been rectified by Apple completely or whether it had not affected all the apps in the first place,
