Does a Mac OS X application developer get crash reports when an application crashes?

Question

If the application crashes when I use it on OS X, I get a small (apparently) dialogue with the OS that allows me to "report an Apple crash." It sends on the stack track and some other system information.

Does this crash information provide access to the application developer of the corresponding application at the time of the crash?

Answer 1

iTunes Connect lets you get crash reports for your apps sold through the App Store. For all other applications, you will need to run your own crash reporting. (I mean, the Crash Reporter dialog is displayed anyway, but if you are not selling through iTunes Connect, there is no automatic way to get the information it collects.)

Answer 2

Mac OS X Reference Library Technical Note TN2123 states:

CrashReporter performs two useful actions:

• When a program crashes, CrashReporter will record a crash log (usually in ~ / Library / Logs / CrashReporter /) and inform the user by registering a message with the system registration device.
• In addition, if the running program operates as a user registered in the graphical interface, the CrashReporter user will present with a dialog in which they want to present an Apple error report (see Figure 1). If the user clicks the "Report" button, CrashReporter displays another dialog box that shows the details of the report (see Figure 2) and allows them to comment on it before sending.

And not much further, it says:

In this techno, I will explain how to interpret the crash logs that you received from end users.

I believe that this means that the information is not automatically provided to the developer. The developer should "get" the crash logs from ~ / Library / Logs / CrashReporter / end-user files.

Answer 3

You can also use something like Flurry to get crash reports (and many other statistics) no matter where or how your application is deployed. Assuming you have an internet connection, of course.