iPhone 15 broke my backup camera

TidBITS Talk
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My 2013 car doesn’t have a backup camera, so in 2017 I bought a Pearl RearVision: a completely wireless system, consisting of a license plate frame with two cameras and a control module that plugs into the car’s OBDII port. For a display you use an app on your iPhone, which connects to the control module with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The control module gets its power from the OBDII port, the camera frame from solar cells that charge an internal battery. The company was staffed mostly by ex-Apple employees.

Unfortunately, a few months after I bought it, Pearl Automation went out of business.

(It’s not surprising, since the Rear Vision was quite expensive. That narrowed their market to people who could afford the Rear Vision but not a new car with a backup camera.)

Oh well, it still worked. Until now – I just bought a new iPhone, and the setup didn’t install the Pearl RearVision app, since it is no longer in the App Store. Note that this app is required to use the system, because your iPhone is the display.

I wasn’t too concerned, because I have the Pearl .ipa file. In fact, I have it two ways: downloaded using iTunes, and also using iMazing. I’ll just reinstall it that way.

But it doesn’t install. “The code signature version is no longer supported”. Which is pretty annoying, because the app still works with the same version of iOS on my old phone. It just refuses to install. A purely Apple restriction.

(I haven’t been in favor of the European Commission’s side loading requirement, but maybe now I am? Considering the device rendered obsolete cost half the price of the iPhone.)

Anyway… anyone know of a backup camera like the Pearl RearVision? From what I see, even wireless ones still require a power source. But if I can find one, it would be cheaper than a new car.

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I got it to install!

Here’s what happened. Occasionally Apple changes the code signing requirements in iOS, and this requires re-signing all of the apps with a new App Store code signing certificate. Apple does this en-mass to all the apps in the App Store, with a change description like “This app has been updated by Apple to use the latest Apple Certificate.”

See this note about it happening in April, 2021. Which happened before I got my iPhone 12, but I didn’t run into any problems migrating to that phone because all the apps were still in the App Store.

I’ve been dutifully downloading app updates every week to .IPA files using iTunes and iMazing, because I don’t fully trust iMazing’s app management. And for good reason: the iTunes .IPA for my camera app was downloaded in April 2021, but the iMazing download was from October 2020.

iMazing didn’t pick up the change to the app when Apple re-signed it. My guess is because Apple didn’t change the version of the app.

Anyway, the fix was to delete the older app from the iMazing library and re-import the correct IPA that was downloaded by iTunes. Then iMazing had no trouble in installing the app to my new iPhone.

I don’t know why Apple Configurator couldn’t install the .IPA file.

I’m so relieved!

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Hi, I deleted the app from my phone last. year when I got my iPhone 15. Is there a solution for me? Thank you.

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Not unless you downloaded the .IPA using iTunes or iMazing. The .IPA files are tied to the Apple ID of the iTunes account.

I did find a download of the Android version of the Pearl app, one idea I had was to sideload it to an old Android phone I happen to have (it wasn’t for personal use), that has no cell service anymore.

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By the way, the lesson here is one I learned long ago: you can’t trust a download available today to still be available tomorrow. That’s why every time I update an application on Windows or macOS, even if the update is done in-app, I also go to the source and download the installer.

I only keep the most recent installer; I depend on backups of my Mac to keep older versions for up to 5 years.

This is why Apple’s removal of the App Store from iTunes with version 12.7 in 2017 is still such a sore point with me. Apple’s terms and conditions for media services disclaims Apple of all responsibility for media backups; it explicitly says that YOU the user must backup if you want to keep a download. But they removed the ability to download apps!

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Thank you for your replies. I did not think of keeping the files. I guess I am SOL.

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A few years ago (Mojave days) I used iTunes to backup my phone. I migrated to an M2 Macbook Air last year. I just used Finder to check for .ipa files on the new machine. They were there in /Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications

Of course having the .ipa file is only the first step. Installing it on a newer iPhone could be difficult
:How to Install .ipa Files on iPhone/iPad without Jailbreak[New Guide]

There is a (slight) possibility you might be able to recover the app from your “Purchased” list, even if it is no longer available on the App Store:

Some tips:

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-download-older-versions-of-apps-on-older-iphone/