How do you debug an iPhone app without having an iPhone?

Question

Okay, I made a pretty simple iPhone app, I tested it with the iOS 5 and iOS 6 simulators for both iPhone and iPad, and everything worked fine! But when I submitted it for review, they rejected it because it crashes on the iPhone 4, and iPad 3, Is there a way I can figure out how to fix this without buying an iPhone 5 and an iPad 3? They did send me the crash files, but I have no clue how to read them. Any suggested is appreciated! :)

Answer 1

You don't. The Simulators are not accurate enough to debug certain problems (the Simulators only run x86 code, not the actual ARM code in the more constrained environment a device presents).

So, you may need to buy, beg or borrow a suitable iOS device or two for testing.

Answer 2

You have to learn how to read the crash files. Try dragging them into the organizer to start with.

There are some aspects that are different on the devices, you should have at least one iOS device of some kind to test on. An iPad is a good choice as you can test both iPhone and iPad apps. Running on any one device will shake out many errors that would happen on all of them - if for example, you didn't realize the iPhone file system was case sensitive but the Mac (and therefore the simulator) filesystem is not.

Even an older iPad 2 refurb would do for such testing...

Answer 3

It's very difficult to debug problems on a specific device without actually having that device. I know that there are some apple stores in my area that will rent devices for a short time for that purpose. You might check around and see if you can find one to borrow or rent for a day or two.