iPhone SDK 3 Programming: Advanced Mobile Development for Apple iPhone and iPod touch

Appendix C. App Store Distribution

The App Store submission process consists of the following steps:

1. The development team uses XCode to build a binary of the application with appropriate code signing. You use the iPhone Developer Program Portal to obtain the required certificates and profiles in order to prepare the application for distribution. Consult the Program Portal User Guide for step-by-step instructions.

2. Once the application has been successfully built and code signed, it needs to be compressed and uploaded to Apple's iTunes Connect site. In addition to the compressed binary, a 512 × 512 image representing the app on iTunes Store must be uploaded. A scaled-down (57 × 57) icon of the same image must be used by the application as an icon on the customer's Spring Board screen. An additional five snapshots of the app can be uploaded. These images will be used by users browsing the store to get a feeling of the application. Your app can choose to show a splash screen that is displayed for a second or so when the user launches the app. It's preferable to make the splash screen identical (scaled up to 320 × 480, of course) to the icon of the app. To add a splash screen, just name the image Default.png and put it in the main bundle of the app before code signing.

3. Description of the app (for every localization) is also required in this process. Ideally, it needs to be limited to 700 characters, but you can go up to 3000 characters. Marketing should work hard on producing the best app ...