Can an iPhone app be made to contain another app? I am not talking about the URL scheme method or the iTunes AppStore linking method. I mean is there a way to enclose an app inside another app and switch between them at will?
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Can an iPhone app be made to contain another app? I am not talking about the URL scheme method or the iTunes AppStore linking method. I mean is there a way to enclose an app inside another app and switch between them at will?
So to make this an answer: in theory, it would be possible to embed an app inside your “parent” app bundle and call its executable. However, you would likely not be able to switch between them on the fly and parameter passing would be tricky (for example, the custom URL scheme is likely to not work). There’s also a very high risk that Apple would reject this and you would have thus wasted a lot of time (and thus money).
The usual way to switch between two app is by using a custom URL scheme. You would then need to have separate apps, each to be downloaded via App Store. You would need to handle that an app is not installed (you can check via canOpenURL:) and, for example, show a dialog with an App Store link that asks the user to download the missing app.
Maybe the better way is to have just one app that is able to handle all your data but make the user pay via In-App Purchase for each additional content to be made available. You could either ship all the data right with your app or have each part to be downloaded.