Universal iPad App rejected because of launch crash that I can't reproduce

Question

Hello everyone, I'm very frustrated with this problem. After one week of waiting my universal iPad app has been rejected because "is crashing on launch on iPad running iPhone OS 3.2 and iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.1.3 and Mac OS X 10.6.2."

Unfortunately I can't replicate the problem, I've tested in debug and release modes and the app works just fine. I even created an ad-hoc configuration and test it in other devices and everything works fine.

I should clarify that this is an update to a current iPhone application and I'm using the same distribution profile as the original iPhone app. Also, I checked everything before building the universal app following this entry:

http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/04/converting-iphone-apps-to-universal.html

Here are the crash logs that Apple sent me:

Incident Identifier: 3E0D4A3B-2896-444D-BCBE-6C0CA1A66A90
CrashReporter Key:   18b5124ea5f657227c5f202a27ed707379b3e2e7
Process:         Transfer [982]
Path:            /var/mobile/Applications/E9062465-7EA6-424C-9C61-D9DBCC7C915A/Transfer.app/Transfer
Identifier:      Transfer
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       ARM (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [1]

Date/Time:       2010-05-04 15:35:57.399 -0700
OS Version:      iPhone OS 3.1.3 (7E18)
Report Version:  104

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes: 0x00000001, 0x3eaa2188
Highlighted Thread:  0

Backtrace not available

Unknown thread crashed with ARM Thread State:
    r0: 0x00002f90    r1: 0x00000000      r2: 0x385242d8      r3: 0x0000010d
    r4: 0x00000000    r5: 0x00000000      r6: 0x00000000      r7: 0x00000000
    r8: 0x2ffffba0    r9: 0x2fffef90     r10: 0x00000000     r11: 0x00000000
    ip: 0x0000000c    sp: 0x2ffffba4      lr: 0x2fe08727      pc: 0x00002f94
  cpsr: 0x40000010

Binary Images:
    0x1000 -    0x25fff +Transfer armv7   /var/mobile/Applications/E9062465-7EA6-424C-9C61-D9DBCC7C915A/Transfer.app/Transfer
0x2fe00000 - 0x2fe24fff  dyld armv7   /usr/lib/dyld
....

And the one for the iPad:

Incident Identifier: 3B170A28-C8E2-4018-8166-E69432A65070
CrashReporter Key:   4a0194e3f60559127faef2b014df605e4c47b981
Hardware Model:      iPad1,1
Process:         Transfer [533]
Path:            /var/mobile/Applications/400EE394-7BEE-45CA-942D-DBDC106360FF/Transfer.app/Transfer
Identifier:      Transfer
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       ARM (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [1]

Date/Time:       2010-05-04 15:37:17.505 -0700
OS Version:      iPhone OS 3.2 (7B367)
Report Version:  104

Exception Type:  00000020
Exception Codes: 0x8badf00d
Highlighted Thread:  0

Application Specific Information:
com.erclab.iphone.photodownload failed to launch in time 
elapsed total CPU time (seconds): 1.150 (user 0.560, system 0.590), 6% CPU 
elapsed application CPU time (seconds): 0.150, 1% CPU

Thread 0:
0   libobjc.A.dylib                0x33561996 0x33560000 + 6550
1   libobjc.A.dylib                0x33564986 0x33560000 + 18822
2   libobjc.A.dylib                0x33564cb2 0x33560000 + 19634

...

The app does not do anything other than loading a local HTML into a web view after the app it's launched so I don't understand why it says "failed to launch in time"

Any help will be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Just submit the same app again to Apple without any changes. Someone else will review it and They will approve it. Trust me, I've done it before. Apple approval team is downright crazy. On devices, apps crash due to memory issues. This is something that can't be reproduced. From your crashdump it looks like that.

Answer 2

Are you trying to load the web view from applicationDidFinishLaunching? Are you sure the tester can connect to your server?

The crash is not a crash at all, it is the system forcing your app to quit because it took too long to start. Move everything you can out of applicationDidFinishLaunching so it can finish, well, launching.

Answer 3

If you are loading a web page, what happens when you disable all networking (airplane mode) and launch? That is one of the standard tests they run, so you should too.

Answer 4

Exactly the same issue happened with our app approval yesterday. 4 crash logs, 2 iPad , 2 iPhone. The iPad versions have the error message that the app took too long and a stack trace. The iPhone version have the EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION and no stack trace.

The app works fine on our 2 iPhones and 1 iPad that we use for testing. App also works if disconnected from network.

Please post if you solved, will do the same.

Answer 5

I would try simulating a low memory condition and see how our app handles it.

EDIT: Check out this Answer iPhone Development Simulate Memory Warning

Answer 6

You said you copied your code over. Did you also copy over your local resources? ie your html file? And you're sure it isn't just linked in? Is it being included in the build? If the file is just linked in to the bundle it may explain why it launches for you but not for them.

In the future (and maybe you want to try this to see if it works out any better for you) the proper way to upgrade your app to a universal app is to use the Xcode file option Upgrade for iPad (or something like that) it will do all the necessary work for you to make it iPad compatible. Step by step is on apple's site, just do a google search how to create universal app.

Answer 7

WOW !!!! Now, this is extremely, extremely frustrating. After lots of hours and even days of debugging, looking at my code, testing in different scenarios, asking questions and 2 rejections, Apple wrote me an email today (18 days after my first submission):

"... This is an issue with the submission process and not with your code. iPhone OS Engineering is investigating the problem...."

You can imagine how I feel right now. Thanks to everyone who help me trying to figure out this "crash".