Question

I have followed an example tutorial online for integrating in-app purchases in to my app. It is all working fine purchasing and unlocking the extra content. However, the notification that gets posted for confirming the purchase can take from 4-9 seconds to appear. This does not make for a very consistent user experience and makes the app appear slow.

Has anyone else had the same problem as this or know of a fix for it?

Answer 1

The long length of time and inconsistency is probably originating from the following:

When the user makes a purchase network messages will be sent to apples server – the length of time this will take will be inconsistent depending on the distance from the server, the amount of nodes the message passes through and the quality of the connections you are using.

When the message reaches apples server it will need to be processed and a response generated – the length of this time will be inconsistent depending on the load currently affecting the server.

A confirmation then will be transmitted back over the network – same rules apply as for the outgoing message.

The device upon receiving the confirmation will display the alert to the user.

Unless you are able to make changes to the network which the message travels upon or can improve apples servers response times you will not be able to reduce the time or inconsistency.

A “solution” would be to display an activity indicator with a helpful message to the user explaining what is happening, if you plan on doing this recommend the following utility DSActivityView. Its easy to use and quick to hook up and has been useful for me when faced with similar problems.