Finally got the contract set up with Apple. So my little app appears to be “Ready for Sale” in iTunes Connect, but when I go to search it in App Store, no result matched.

It seems a lot developers are experiencing the same problem here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1607276&tstart=60

Is this related to a slow updating rate of search index of iTunes Store? I can’t get my app showing up in iTunes Link Maker either.

But it’s possible to reach the app detail page in iTunes via direct link:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=294454696

You can make your own direct link if you’re experiencing the same problem that app not showing up in search or link maker, just replace the id part in URL with your own app id, you can get it in app details in iTunes Connect.

IMHO, it does take too long time for solo developers on all those non-tech issues. You may not know that I planned to release my app in August! But now it’s November!

Anyway, perhaps what I’ve got is the best I can get, so now I can focus more on tech things to make my app more polished.

Update: AppShopper.com has a page for Gomoku now: http://appshopper.com/games/gomoku

(Thanks Robin Lu!)

So, finally I’ve got my activation code working, actually Apple sent me the right code, but in wrong format like 1234-5678-ABCD-EFGH, that doesn’t work. Then another guy from Apple told me to enter 12345678ABCDEFGH, and it worked, I’m a bit speechless. It seems that something is not quite consistent in the program.

And next step is to set up a contract with Apple, since I’m going to sell my apps. Things are a bit complicated again. Why don’t they use some lightweight method like Western Union? Google uses that way to pay AdSense publishers in China. And Apple uses SWIFT code to transfer money, and I guess this is quite new for most people. One more thing is that W-8BEN is required to be mailed to Apple for foreign developers.

I hope all those non-tech stuff could be settled down before December.

I just encountered this problem and finally got it working. Here are some tips if you’ve experienced the same problem:

1. Try create a new iPhone project in Xcode, and your distribution provisioning profile will show up in the new project. Then back to the problematic project, you may get lucky.
2. Enter iPhone Distribution in Code Signing Identity, select Code Signing Provisioning Profile and press delete. Switch to distribution configuration and build, if you got lucky, you’ll be prompted about permission or something Keychain, click Always Allow. After build, you may find distribution provisioning profile showing up.
3. You’ll need to generate and request different certificates for Developer profile and Distribution profile.
4. Actually you don’t need to enter the name part in Code Signing Identity, just iPhone Developer and iPhone Distribution is enough for Xcode to locate these profiles.

Since Xcode behaves strange and different from what Apple describes in program portal guide, this could be a bug and I hope it gets fixed in next version of Xcode. I believe that many people were mad about this.

So finally I received the activation code of iPhone Developer Program from Apple, but after I submit the activation form at iPhone Dev Center, I got an error saying:

We are unable to process your request.

After several attempts I realize that I have to e-mail ADC China for support again. What a system they’re building.