14 DAY TRIAL // As every year goes, Apple plans on shuttering iTunes Connect for the winter holidays, specifically between December 22 and December 29, to let its engineers cool down before resuming work around New Year’s Eve.
iTunes Connect is a suite of tools designed in-house by Apple with the sole purpose of helping a developer manage content sold on the iTunes Store. This includes apps for iOS and OS X as well as books. Members of the iOS Developer Program and Mac Developer Program make continuous use of this tool to manage their apps and sales reports, tax and banking information, stats, and much more. iTunes Connect requires the same Apple ID you used to enroll.
According to the email from Apple, iTunes Connect and almost all associated services will become unavailable starting Monday, December 22, and will remain that way through Monday, December 29. iTunes Connect, Application Loader, and iTunes Connect for iOS will all be off-limits during this time.
What this means for developers
If you’re a developer putting bread on the table by coding apps, listen up. According to the email, which may or may not be in your inbox already, you will not be able to submit new apps, updates, or make alterations to your in-app purchases during this time. Same goes for iTunes Connect access or making changes to TestFlight Beta.
TestFlight Beta Testing allows developers to invite up to 1,000 users to test iOS 8 apps before App Store submission. Each time a developer invites a tester, the receiver automatically gets an invitation email to join the group and is prompted to install the TestFlight app from iTunes. All this won’t be available during the aforementioned timeframe.
Things that still work
What a developer can do to avoid some inconveniences is to schedule their app releases or price changes to go into effect between December 22 and December 29.
“Just make sure that your changes are scheduled, submitted, and approved by December 18, to ensure your app remains available during this busy period,” Apple says. “Users who are currently testing or invited to test your prerelease apps with TestFlight Beta Testing will not be affected,” it adds.
Developers can further request Sales and Trends reports during the outage by making use of the Autoingestion tool. However, the Cupertino company kindly asks users to note that “these reports may take longer to become available.” Any questions need to be directed to the App Store Team at itunesconnect.apple.com
