Just downloaded SS6Pro for OSX. Nothing shows up in the in-app purchases window. Anyone else experience this?
Lynn
Date
Votes
45 comments
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Keiron Smith Hi Lynn,
It looks like our in app purchases were never approved for sale. Unfortunately, we need to submit a new version of the app (6.0.2) to have them approved. We do plan to do that next week sometime. Until then you will just have to do without the extra stars and galaxies. Sorry.
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Jd 2 Astro Still nothing showing available in In-App Purchases for v6.0.2.
JohnD
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Bill Tschumy Are you on Plus or Pro? I have had other customers says it is working for them with Pro. Plus does not have any in-app purchases.
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Jd 2 Astro I have Pro.
JohnD
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Bill Tschumy And you do have internet access at the time the app was started? It needs to check in with Apple to see what purchases are available.
As I said, I have other customers that have successfully purchased and installed the extension databases so I know Apple is serving them. We just need to find out why you are not seeing them.
What version of macOS are you running?
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Jd 2 Astro Yes I have Internet access and I have the latest Mac OS (10.13.4). I even restarted SS and no change.
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Never mind. OK, I found it. I had to open the App Store first to see the In-app purchases.
JohnD
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Bill Tschumy Really?? You had to go to the iOS App Store before the purchases would show up in SkySafari? That is very strange. When you went to the App Store did you have to log in? Perhaps it wasn't showing them if you weren't properly logged into the Store.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear you found the solution.
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Jd 2 Astro No. I only have to log in with my Apple ID if I actually purchase something. Normally I can go to the store, check for updates, and get any updates for OS or Mac software or any apps which I have already purchased.
JohnD
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Bill Tschumy OK, I don't know why that made it start working, but I'll remember it for anyone else in that situation.
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Dean I'm seeing nothing in the In-App Purchases panel either. Is there supposed to be a list of items available for purchase displayed there?
I tried it both with and without launching the App Store.
The Help section for In-App Purchases is also lacking any useful information concerning how to make an in app purchase.
SkySafari Pro 6.0.2, Mac OS 10.11.6.
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Bill Tschumy I'm really not sure what is happening here. This is the first time we've tried doing in-app purchases on Mac. The technology doesn't seem as polished as on iOS.
You do have internet access, right?
Thanks for pointing out that the Help doesn't have a section on In-App Purchases. If it was working correctly, it should be obvious. There are items for purchase on the screen and you click on them to buy. Just like buying in the App Store.
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Dean Yes, Internet access is always on, since this is my desktop Mac, hardwired to my router.
I tried clicking on "Restore Purchases", even though I haven't made any, and an App Store log in window appeared. I logged in, but nothing happened, no items for purchase appeared. I've tried this both with and without the App Store app open in the background.
Every time I relaunch SkySafari and click the "Restore Purchases" button, the App Store log in window appears, whether or not I have the App Store app running. So unlike Jd 2 Astro I'm not seeing any connection between SkySafari and the App Store app.
Can you post an image of how the In-App Purchases window is supposed to look before any purchases are made, so that I know what I'm supposed to be seeing?
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Bill Tschumy You should be seeing something like the attached picture. Since I've already purchased the items, it is hard to show your the un-purchased look. The only real difference is that instead of saying "Installed" it has the purchase price.
I am still trying to figure out why some folks are having an issue and other aren't.
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Dean After doing nothing on my computer associated with SkySafari or the App Store since yesterday, I just launched SkySafari today and see that the in-app purchases are now showing.
Go figure....
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Bill Tschumy It is a mystery. Glad it is working now.
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Dean Just as a last point (which probably has no connection to this problem), I have noticed an additional process that starts every time SkySafari is launched. (And stops when SkySafari is Quit.)
Its name is com.apple.security.pboxd.
By any chance is this process involved in the link between SkySafari and the App Store? Might the problem lie there and possibly be an Apple bug?
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Bill Tschumy No, that shouldn't have anything to do with it. I found this on the web:
macOS includes a trusted daemon process called Powerbox (
pboxd) whose job is to present and control open/save dialog boxes on behalf of sandboxed applications. After the user selects a file or directory into which a file should be saved, Powerbox pokes a hole in the application sandbox that allows it to perform the specific action. -
Sander Berents Also not working for me. Doesn't matter if I first launch the Mac App Store application or not. It's logged in, and I even selected "View my account" to be sure, etc. Selecting "Restore Purchases" also has no effect. The list always remains blank.
This is on SkySafari 6.0.2 Pro, macOS 10.13.4, for the US Mac App Store.
I checked the SkySafari/store/commerce/etc logs with Console, but didn't find any errors that might be related in there.
Incidentally, I have the original complete UCAC5 catalog already on my machine. Would it be possible to add an advanced preference (defaults write) so I can point SkySafari to that catalog and there would be no need to have multiple copies of the UCAC5 catalog?
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Bill Tschumy No, you cannot add the catalog yourself. It needs to be in a specific format for consumption by SkySafari.
Still working on the in-app purchases.
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Bill Tschumy OK, I've got an idea how to get some more information about this problem. When we are retrieving the in-app purchase list from Apple, we write some information to the log files. For those of you that don't see the in-app purchases, could you please try the following:
- Quit SkySafari
- Open the Console.app application. This is usually in your Applications/Utilities folder.
- In the Devices section on the left, choose your Mac if it is not already selected.
- In the Search field in the upper right, enter "StoreKit:" (without the quotes) and type Return to start filtering on that text.
- Now start SkySafari.
If we are correctly retrieving the available in-app purchases you should see something like the following:
default 08:27:08.980558 -0600 SkySafari 6 Pro StoreKit: Validating IAP products
default 08:27:10.874201 -0600 SkySafari 6 Pro StoreKit: Found product: com.simulationcurriculum.SkySafari6MacPro.PGCExtension for $4.99
default 08:27:10.874431 -0600 SkySafari 6 Pro StoreKit: Found product: com.simulationcurriculum.SkySafari6MacPro.UCAC5Extension for $9.99Please let me know if you see these.
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Dean Since the problem with mine spontaneously disappeared, this information is probably of little use, but I performed the console commands and as expected did see the three lines:
(My older Mac OS 10.11.6 seems to have slightly different console formatting than yours)
4/16/18 11:34:12.500 AM SkySafari 6 Pro[14873]: StoreKit: Validating IAP products
4/16/18 11:34:14.211 AM SkySafari 6 Pro[14873]: StoreKit: Found product: com.simulationcurriculum.SkySafari6MacPro.PGCExtension for $4.99
4/16/18 11:34:14.211 AM SkySafari 6 Pro[14873]: StoreKit: Found product: com.simulationcurriculum.SkySafari6MacPro.UCAC5Extension for $9.99If nothing more, it may be useful as an additional data point.
Hopefully others who still have the problem are following the thread and will post their results too.
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Bill Tschumy This is only really useful to me if you are having problems with in-app purchase. If after you start the app, you see the purchases, then this is expected. If you didn't see the purchases but got that in the console, then that is very useful information.
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Dean I just rebooted my Mac. Now I have no in-app purchases again.
I repeated the console procedure and this time no occurrences of StoreKit: occur.
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Bill Tschumy OK, I think I now know what is going on. Let me work on a fix.
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Bill Tschumy Dean,
One more thing. After a reboot and no products, does going to the Update tab of the Mac App Store make them appear after restarting SkySafari? That still doesn't make sense to me.
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Dean No. I just tried that again and it made no difference. That trick only seems to have worked for Jd 2 Astro. Maybe it was a coincidence. It never worked for me. Mine started working the following day, all by itself, and continued to work until I rebooted a few minutes ago.
In case you are interested, I have captured the console logs for a successful (in-app OK) and unsuccessful (No in-app) launching of SkySafari, filtering by "SkySafari 6".
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Jd 2 Astro OK Bill,
Here is what I saw using the Console app.
1. Booted my Mac Mini, started the Console.app, and set it to search for Store.Kit.
2. Started SkySafari and checked the Console display. Nothing showed.
3. Closed SkySafari and then restarted it. This time those lines showed up in the Console display and the extensions appeared in the In App Purchases list.
4. Closed SkySafari and restarted again and they still showed.
5. Restarted my Mac Mini and went through restarting Console and SkySafari. Again nothing showing.
6. Later tried another Mac restart and it worked on the initial start of SkySafari. Weird. Closed SS and restarted and they did not show up. Tried the old App Store / Updates page and then they came back and continued to show up after restarting SS.
7. Did a cold boot of the Mac and went through steps 1 and 2 again with the same result, nothing showing. So sometimes on a warm restart it works, sometimes it doesn't, but cold boot seems to fail all the time.
This is really strange.
JohnD
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Sander Berents Also no occurrences of StoreKit logs for me. Not when starting SkySafari, not when opening its In App Purchases panel and not when clicking its "Restore Purchases" button (the App Store will ask for my Apple ID password when I do, but the list remains empty - I didn't do any in-app purchase of course).
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Bill Tschumy I think I now understand the problem. It is a subtle timing issue at startup. We are planning to push a new release early next week.
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Jim Forrester I'll toss in my story and hope it helps. Running 10.10.5 on a mid-2009 machine.
Tried all of the above, except Console in my OS is different from what others have described. Tapping "Restore App Purchases" brings up the sign-in with Apple ID box and it is not recognized via this route. Console dutifully notes the lack of recognition. But I can log into the App Store to into my Apple account via internet browser. I even changed my Apple password to see if that would help. It didn't.
Look forward to the update and all those stars next week.
Thanks,
Jim Forrester
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