Is the code signature crucial to prove ownership? - ios

I am developing an iOS game (closed source), but working in partnership with publisher company. The ownership should be mine and then I should authorize the publisher to just distribute the game in some countries/regions via legal agreement. However I need to sign the code with p12 cert and a provisioning profile... The publisher sent me their certificates, but is it safe to use them since I should remain the owner of the game?

To be on the safer side I would suggest you to add the publisher's apple Id to your team(in your apple Id). You can then assign particular roles to the publisher and restrict the actions which can be performed. You car get more detailed information from below sources :
https://developer.apple.com/support/roles/
https://sandeshsardar.com/2017/04/01/how-to-manage-your-developer-account-team/
Hope this helps you in some way.

Related

How does one share an existing iOS provisioning profile (or app due for submission)?

A colleague has a completed iPhone app ready for submission to the App Store. In his iTunesConnect/Apple Dev account/XCode/etc. he has his own profiles and certifs all set up. Now we would like to pass responsibility for the submission to me. I have my own iTunesConnect/Apple Dev account/XCode/etc. as you might imagine, associated with my own business.
I'll be making the first submission, but ideally we'd like to both be able to make them for future releases, and I'm imagining it would be best to use his rather my than my Apple Dev account, as otherwise the app will be associated with my company rather than his, and he built the app for his client.
Yes? No? What is the best way ahead please?
Thank you for reading.
If these are individual Apple Developer enrollments, then there is no team. You can only have developer teams with corporate/company Apple Developer enrollments/accounts. With individual accounts, only the enrolled agent (using their own developer account login) can download their certificates and provisions and submit apps under their accounts name.
If you do let the other developer use or log into your Mac to make an app submission using their own developer account, you might want to set up a separate User account on your Mac for that purpose, in order not to mix together the keychain certificates and logins of two accounts, which can make a mess.
If you want the app in the App store to be listed under the end clients name (recommended), and that client is a corporation, not an individual, then you might want to get added to the client's (enrolled in Apple's Developer program as a company) team.

Binary Rejected in Itunes Connect [duplicate]

I have recently uploaded a new application to iTunes Connect for the approval process. Its version is 1.0. Today the binary was rejected and the following was mentioned in the resolution center.
The seller and company names associated with your app do not reflect the name,
“Secured” in the app or its metadata, as required by section 1.2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.
Next Steps
Your app must be published under a seller name and company name that reflects the Secured brand. If you have developed these apps on behalf of a client, please advise your client to add you to the development team of their Apple Developer account.
Once created, you cannot change your seller name or company name in iTunes Connect. For assistance with changing your company name or seller name, you will need to contact iTunes Connect through the Contact Us page.
We have generated the application using the proper profiles. Any idea as to when this issue is raised by Apple? We could not get any proper information about the reason and the way to resolve it. Does this have anything to do with the application name being similar to some other application named as "Secured" and out app name being Secured?
I found a comment in Apple Developer forum, and it works for me.
rajveer123
Mar 14, 2017 10:46 AM
(in response to nikhileshrayapureddy)
Hi,
I might be able to help on this. I just got my app approved and had
the same reason. You need to make sure, that if your app is called
XYZ and you are the owner 123, that 123 owns all copyright for the app
and it's content within. If the content is third-party make sure you
comment this in comments box. It's quite reasonable, as I might upload
an app called Windows for iOS and do not even own the copyright for
this brand. Also, make sure you write the correct name etc. in the
copyright box, who owns the brand. It's not the app name, but the
publisher or if you develop for someone, it's his company/client name.
I don't think it's that complictaed with Apple, you just need to be
straight forward. I hope this helps someone!
Link: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/73820
From the comment, I did as below:
In "Prepare for submission", scroll to Copyright area, copy your
team name and paste it as Copyright of this application.
Resubmit your application.
In my case, it took 2 days to get my application approved for sale in Apple store. Have your patience.
UPDATED: Now, apple allows us upload a certificate file to show their authentication of this app then we can use the our owner app name.
You typically get this kind of rejection when you submit an app that has some known brand in the name of the app, icon, inside the app or in the metadata. For example, if your company is "Milkshakes Ltd." and you use "Nike" brand in the name of your app "Milkshakes - Nike Edition".
This typically happens when a company asks you - the developer - to create and app for them and you are trying to release the app under your developer account. But the app needs to be released under the company developer account (the company needs to enroll Apple Developer Program if it has not yet done so). That is why Apple advises the following:
If you have developed these apps on behalf of a client, please advise your client to add you to the development team of their Apple Developer account.
Releasing apps under a different account is against Apple Developer Program License Agreement:
For the sake of clarity, You may authorize contractors to develop Applications on Your behalf, but any such Applications must be owned by You, submitted under Your own developer account, and distributed as Applications only as expressly permitted herein. You are responsible to Apple for Your contractors’ activities under Your account (e.g., adding them to Your team to perform development work for You) and their compliance with this Agreement. Any actions undertaken by Your contractors arising out of this Agreement shall be deemed to have been taken by You, and You (in addition to Your contractors) shall be responsible to Apple for all such actions.
However, based on your description, it does not look this is your case. I don't know about any well known "Secured" or "Safe" brands. You did not write your company name, there might be a conflict too. I would try to clarify the issue with Apple Review Team by responding to the issue in Resolution Center. They might point you to the brand you are in conflict with. Or it might have been rejected by a mistake.
We ran into the same issue. Basically it's a trademark issue. I'm not arguing if it's right or wrong. But the solution:
Either you have to list in the developer account of your customer.
Or legally acquire the trademark and brand name of your customer (may be limited for the purpose of AppStore/PlayStore/Digital Marketing)
I know point 2 sounds a bit off. I agree it is.
Let's take an example:
Developer: FooBar Software
App: No1 Pharma
In AppStore listing, the seller of the app is the developer. So from the user point of view, if you look at the listing on AppStore, it would say the app "No1 Pharma" is being sold by "FooBar Software". This doesn't sound right.
Another case:
The publishing rights of Harry Potter Books (acc. to wiki) is owned by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Scholastic (US)
Developer: Bloomsbury Publishing
App: Harry Potter
This will sound right, in spite of the fact that the seller name and app name did not match. The listing would read "Bloomsbury Publishing" is the seller of the app "Harry Potter". This sounds right. So Bloomsbury can publish all the trademarks/brands it owns as different apps in it's developer account.
Perhaps AppStore might choose to differentiate the developers from sellers. Because developers are not sellers. That's the reality.
Let's say IBM develops the "Harry Potter" app for "Bloomsbury", then the listing should read:
Developer: IBM
Seller: Bloomsbury
App: Harry Potter
Hope this helps.
I had the same issue. They accepted it after I changed the individual membership account to a company/Organisation membership & uploaded it again. If your product is a brand which is registered, it should be a company account which reflects the brand name of your product
I have the same issue and it was resolved, Now when you develop an app on apple store it would be one of these two options:
You are developing it on behalf of another person or organization and either your account is an individual or organization you must provide apple with the apple account for the client because this client is the real owner for the app.
The second option is that you develop this app for your self and you are the owner for it, in this case, if you are an individual you must inform apple that you own this as individual (this is my case) and they will resolve it to you, you can reach the support team by creating a case on the resolution center and resubmit your app again. I believe similar steps should be made for organization account.
But an important thing to take it into account, that you are the real owner of this app and you are not using other one brand.
Hope this helps

Apple (enterprise) developer programm: Same team agent of multiple teams seems not possible

we as a company are enrolled in two developer programs of apple
Apple Developer Program
Apple Developer Enterprise Program
Historically both programs were overseen by two different persons at my company, one of being myself for the Apple Developer Program.
Now we want to switch the team agent of the Apple Developer Enterprise Program also to me. However, this seems not possible, as the old agent gets the following error when trying to do so:
"The selected team agent is already an agent of another team. Please choose another member"
While this statement is fairly clear, I'd like to know...
if anybody has information why that should be so
if anybody of you succeeded in consolidating the two programs under one agent
Will open a support ticket to apple and report back here, of course. Just wanted to know, if I might be missing something :-)
Many thanks and kind regards
Jens
Contacted Apple Support about this. Answer was to use alternate Apple ID.
So your best bet if you start from scratch would probably be to generate two distinct email addresses, one for each developer program like:
adp#example.com
adep#example.com
Create an according Apple ID for each and use that on the specific program.
Shame though, that you can't use the same Apple ID for the two programs.
Edit on May 2018: This is now (maybe has always been) at least to some extend part of the Apple enrollment documentation. https://developer.apple.com/support/enrollment/
It currently reads:
Enrolling in Multiple Programs
The Apple Developer Enterprise Program and the iOS Developer University Program each require a unique Apple ID than that used for any other membership. You’ll need to set up a new Apple ID and enroll separately. If you currently have an iTunes Connect account to sell another media type (books, music, TV content, or movies), you cannot use the Apple ID associated with that iTunes Connect account to enroll in any other programs. You’ll need to set up a new Apple ID for all other memberships.
Edit 2020/01/14:
The current wording is slightly different, but still you'll need separate Apple IDs for ADP, AEDP and IDUP
The Apple Developer Enterprise Program and the iOS Developer University Program each require separate identity verification. To enroll, you’ll need to set up a new Apple ID and go through our standard verification process.
Cheers
Jens

Connecting Apple ID to multiple iTunes Connect

I'm not sure if this question already exists, since I'm not exactly sure what to search for.
So here's the deal:
I have an Apple Dev account linked to the email ash#ashmenon.com. I've worked on an app in the member center, and I've also got an iTunes Connect account connected to this same Apple ID.
Right now I'm working on an app (Super Marvel App) as part of a team (let's call it Team Marvel) My Apple ID has been added to that team, as an 'Admin'. So when I go into the member center, the MC asks me which organisation I want to choose (my own, or Team Marvel).
However, the agent for this team was unable to add my Apple ID in iTunes Connect, as it belongs to an existing dev account. So what we did was to add a plus-suffixed version of my email, in this case 'ash+marvel#ashmenon.com'.
Problem is, I'm the developer for the team, not the agent (he's non-tech), so any archiving, submission, validation, and exporting comes from my XCode. But when I try and submit/validate my archived app, it tells me that my organization does not have permission to submit this application. (not sure if this is important, but the name of the organisation it displays during this error is not the same as the name of the development team that I selected earlier in the submission process.
I tried adding the ash+marvel#ashmenon.com address as one of the Apple ID accounts in XCode, but it tells me 'Error Fetching Developer Info'. I presume this is because the account in question is not an actual Apple Dev account.
For now I've worked around the process by submitting via Application Loader, but it feels like I'm hacking the system somewhat.
QUESTION 1:
Is there a proper way of doing this that I'm missing out? Gut instinct tells me that this hack-esque workaround is going to bite me in the backend later on.
QUESTION 2:
Is the Team Marvel agent required to do all iTunes Connect submissions himself? This seems like a very counter-intuitive approach considering this is Apple we're talking about.
Any assistance is much appreciated. Stay awesome, you guys.
NOTE:
Names of applications and teams have been changed for privacy reasons, and because Marvel is infinitely cooler than anything else.
UPDATE: Do not use this approach any more. Apple has finally fixed iTunes Connect, Developer Center and Xcode to properly handle one Apple ID for multiple organizations. Add the same Apple ID to as many organizations in both systems as you need.
I believe there is finally a way to make this work while preserving your sanity in Xcode 6.3.2.
The main trick is to make sure that your iTunes Connect account and Member Center account Apple id's are the same for any particular organization. It looks like Xcode assumes that and tries to use the Member Center Apple ID to access iTunes Connect.
So, as mentioned in the question, make sure and use a "+folder" style of email address to avoid creating and managing a whole bunch of real email accounts. But here's the crucial part - add that "+folder" style account to Member Center (i.e. invite the "+folder" account) for that organization and remove your plain Apple ID if you were using it there.
I.e. don't use Member Center's ability to associate multiple organizations with one account. That will just confuse Xcode if you also need to access multiple iTunes Connect accounts. Use one "+folder" account for each organization you are working with and add that Apple ID to both iTunes Connect and Member Center.
As far as I know, that's the way it is. iTunes Connect is not linked to Member center, and unlike Member center, it cannot handle multiple accounts per email. I'm on the same boat as you. Always need to save an IPA file and submit from Application Loader. Wish we could select the proper iTunes Connect account

iOS company name for distributing apps to App Store

I've had a look around SO and Google but can't find a definite and specific answer, maybe it's supposed to be obvious!
But, I haven't submitted an app to the store before so when I went to add one through iTunes Connect, the first thing it says is
Specify the company or developer name to display on the App Store for your apps.
The company name cannot be changed, so be sure to enter the correct name.
Now, does setting that company name apply to ALL apps I upload after setting it or does it ask you this question and let you set it every time you add a new app?
If it sets it for all apps, does it have to match the company name I've used to register my iOS developer account with? When I created the account I gave the name Company Ltd, so would I strictly have to use Company Ltd when setting the company name to be displayed on the App Store?
Many thanks.
Normally the company name will (and can) not change after it is set (well they can do it but they request a load of legal papers and stuff).
However, if you indeed run a company that should not matter and you should already know what you are doing. You have to be careful though, as if you pretend to be a company and you are not (e.g. as individual developer), you might run into legal issues which can cause some trouble to say the least (even if you "only" plan to release free apps).
In iTunes Connect, when you add a new application, they specify :
"[...] name to display on the App Store for your app*s* [...]"
apps is plural, so it means it's for all this account's apps.
You cannot do it online, you have to request apple to do is, by calling them.
To request a migration of your individual developer membership to a company developer membership, first make sure that you meet our initial migration requirements:
You have an active individual developer program membership.
Your company does not operate as a sole proprietorship, DBA, fictitious name, trade name, or branch.
You are a founder or cofounder of your company.
You have authority to bind your company to Apple Developer Program agreements.
Your company does not already hold an active or expired company membership.
If you have paid apps, you have agreed to the latest Paid Apps contract in the Contracts, Tax, and Banking module of iTunes Connect.
You are able to obtain a DUNS number for your company: https://developer.apple.com/support/D-U-N-S.
If you do not meet our migration requirements, you may use a separate Apple ID to enroll your company in an Apple Developer Program.
To proceed with your migration request, contact apple by phone (https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone) or send them an email with the following information:
Confirm that you meet the initial migration requirements listed above.
Provide the name of the company to which you would like to migrate your individual membership.
After your information has been reviewed and accepted, they will send you an email with instructions for completing the migration. During this process, you will be unable to access the Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles portal.
If you need to update your individual bank information, do so before you start the company migration.
Hope this helps.

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