Analytics

November 13, 2012 11:10 AM

Need specific details about what tracking/user data is available through the basic Apple App Store developer tools.

This may be a naive or misguided questions but my googling is getting me down a rabbit hole and Apple's own website is a giant, obfuscatory pain in the butt. So, building an iOS game for a large client. Time to start talking about analytics. Probably going to be using Flurry along with some other 3rd party add-ons, but I thought Apple rolled out a UDID-ban work-around and a set of native analytics/tracking tools. Did I misunderstand? Where can I find a list of the data or a view of the dashboard available from Apple for viewing and managing your user data? Or, do they do none of the actual tracking, and it's up to the developer to implement Google Analytics or Flurry or the like?

posted by spicynuts to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

UIDevice uniqueIdentifier Deprecated - What To Do Now? suggests using the NSUUID class to generate unique identifiers. These may not be preserved if the app is deleted and reinstalled, and it is therefore also suggested to store the identifier in the system keychain. I don't know much about Flurry, but Apple may block your app if you don't first query the user for permission to track usage, so that may be another issue to consider.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:37 AM on November 13, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks, BP...yeah assuming I get around that, I'm more asking does the App store or Apple provide an actual dashboard to see and sort any user data collected and if so what is that data or are they completely hands off and the developer is responsible for integrating a 3rd party SDK like Flurry or Google Analytics?
posted by spicynuts at 11:39 AM on November 13, 2012

Best answer: Apple didn't implement a dashboard. They provide the same download/sales data in iTunes Connect that they have always made available, but don't track usage for you. They did more-or-less replace the UDID with ASIdentifierManager (see this blog post for a high-level summary), and there are a couple other clever tricks that analytics frameworks can use to track users across apps (a lot of people use OpenUDID, and I just came across the new SecureUDID from Crashlytics, which claims to offer more end-user privacy control).

As far as I know, most developers generally implement Google Analytics, Flurry, etc... and let those frameworks worry about the user tracking aspects within the confines of what the OS allows.
posted by zachlipton at 11:41 AM on November 13, 2012

Best answer: The only interface I see for apps is iTunes Connect, which has no user tracking capability that I can see. I don't think Apple has ever offered this, so I think you're responsible for setting it up (again, within the privacy policy that Apple uses to approve and deny app submissions).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:42 AM on November 13, 2012

Response by poster: ok yeah i guess i misread something. so itunes connect is barebones sales and downloads, yeah? if so, that's my answer.
posted by spicynuts at 11:58 AM on November 13, 2012