Bad App Store binaries plague Gaia and other apps

UPDATE: On Thursday July 5, around 9pm PST, Apple re-pushed out the Gaia GPS v6.5 update, and presumably updates for all the affected apps. You should now be able to download the latest release, which will fix your app if you downloaded a corrupt binary.

ORIGINAL POST: Many people have emailed to say new installs and updates of Gaia GPS are crashing. This is an issue with the App Store itself, and affects many apps that had updates on July 4.

This blog provides steps to resolve the issue, background, and links to news articles and blogs.

How to Fix

1. Some people are still receiving corrupt binaries, and others are not. You may simply want to wait to update, until Apple issues a statement saying everything is fixed.
2. If you already updated and Gaia doesn’t work, you can delete the app, and try and download it again. Many people report this now works, though some are still receiving bad binaries as of 11am Thursday, July 5.
3. Some users report they can download a proper copy to iTunes on their computer, and load the new version to Gaia that way.
4. If you received a corrupt binary, and you need to recover your data, there are three options:
   1. Restore your phone from a backup from iCloud or iTunes, and wait to update.
   2. Wait for the next release of Gaia GPS, or for Apple to push a fix to this issue directly. Your data is still there, the app is just unloadable.
   3. Contact support@gaiagps.com, and we can help you get your data immediately, in a pinch. Please have mercy, because this is time-consuming for us.

Background

Apple reviewed and approved our latest update on July 4. Soon after, we began getting emails from people letting us know that Gaia would not boot – these emails came from both new users and people who updated. These reports were mostly, if not all, from people running iOS 5.1.1.

At that point, we checked our automatic crash logger, where we did not see any reported crashes. We then loaded up the app on to 7 devices. One of the devices, an iPhone running iOS 5.1.1, received a corrupt binary and would not boot Gaia. At that point, we ran the device under debug mode in XCode, booting from the build of our code we shipped to Apple. Again, we were not able to detect any crashes.

Finally, we began to suspect the issue was with the App Store itself. Soon, blog posts and confirmations emerged that other developers were having the same issue.

As of 11am on July 5, Apple is mum on the issue.

Other Links

1. You can read about affected apps and symptoms on the Instapaper blog.
2. TechCrunch is calling it a FairPlay DRM issue.
3. ZDNet is suggesting a way to get a non-corrupt binary via iTunes.
4. An app called GoodReader is providing this guidance to users.
5. There is also a discussion thread on Hacker News.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused during the holiday. We’ll update our blog as we get more information.