I am currently developing iPhone app, and I use a "Apple standard program".
At the moment, I am deploying this app to users with OTA with distribution certificat and OTA (over the air) installation.
It's working but i'm limited up to 100 devices.
I read that the "Apple Enterprise Program" don't have this limit (of 100 devices).
Is it right ?
If I enroll to Enterprise program, will I need to get UUID devices in order to generate provisioning profiles to deploy my app (like I do now with standard program and my 100 devices users) ?
Thanks for feedbacks.
No you don't need to know the UDIDs for Enterprise distributed apps.
It's very important to note however that you're not allowed to distribute Enterprise Apps to People other than your employees or other members of the organization which enrolled in the Enterprise Dev Program.
You should be aware that Enterprise distributed apps are signed with a special distribution certificate and provisioning profile which only allow the app to run after the device had an opportunity to check with apples servers if your certificate is still valid. This means that Apple, should they happen to learn about illicitly distributed Enterprise apps, is perfectly able to shut these apps down by revoking the distribution certificate. Furthermore, those certificates expire each year anyway just like the regular distribution certificates do.
Unfortunately, there's no real solution to your problem - I happen to know, because the 100 device limit put a halt to a research project of one of my clients, too. In their current form, the available development programs as offered by Apple offer only a minimum of flexibility. You might want to contact them about it, if enough people do, maybe they'll change something one day.
The Apple Enterprise Program will only allow distributing within the organization. Further Apple restricts the Enterprise Program to large organizations and there are other restrictions as to membership.
If you are looking for general distribution the Apple Enterprise Program is not an option.
Related
When distributing apps using the Apple Developer Enterprise option, can a single iOS device have apps from two different Apple Developer Enterprise profiles?
We found this article stating it can not be done.
http://mobiledan.net/2012/03/02/5-options-for-distributing-ios-apps-to-a-limited-audience-legally/
I contacted Apple Developer support directly and they did not have an answer of yes or no, but they could not find any documentation about this scenario. They did state that MDM could be used to limit apps that can be installed. But there is no reason to believe you can't install apps from two different Enterprise developer profiles.
Does anyone have first hand info about this scenario? The article makes us question this.
Thank you
The enterprise account simply allows you to create a signed and trusted application. This takes the place of an application signed by Apple.
The only sticking point here is in the license agreement for an enterprise account. The devices eligible to run an enterprise app are very limited - essential only allowed on employee devices. So it would be rare to have a person that is employed by multiple companies with enterprise accounts.
The ipa for the app contains the provisioning profile registered with Apple to certify the app. There is nothing associated the device with that enterprise account such as the way an AdHoc device is registered with a particular account.
Here is a link to a similar answer as well
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/141662/different-enterprise-signed-apps-on-same-ios-device
I have a customer who is using an app on their iPads that was developed by a third party who is no longer around. The app is not in the AppStore. They were explaining to me how once a year they need to login to TestFlight.com to reset something. I looked at Testflight at as far as I can tell, its a testing platform, not for production use. I assume they are renewing the dev certificates or something similar.
Does this make sense? Is this a legal way of running a native app on an iOS device?
What are the benefits of services like TestFlight?
Your Enterprise Certificate
Enterprise apps must be re-provisioned once a year. You will need to login to the Apple Dev Center, refresh your Provisioning Profile, resign the app, and re-upload to TestFlight.
TestFlight And HockeyApp
In addition to Testflight there is also HockeyApp.net. These are services that allow you to manage an app either during test using Ad Hoc certificates from Apple or acting as a managed AppStore when developing Enterprise apps.
It also has a number of great features, including, crash report collection, managing of testers and their feedback, update notifications on the client, test device UDID management, and verifying that the tester has actually installed the correct version.
All these things are incredibly useful to someone that has to deal with these sorts of things professionally.
Enterprise vs. Ad Hoc
Enterprise certificates from Apple allow you many of the same privileges as the AppStore. This arrangement requires you to be a business with a DUNS number and you must sign a contract with Apple that states you will use this exclusively in adherence to their terms. This costs about $299/year and the app is good for one year once correctly signed. You can install it on any iOS device in accordance with the contract you signed with Apple.
Ad Hoc is what is used for in-house testing. Each device UDID has to be added to the Apple Developer Portal, attached to the provisioning profile, downloaded, and resign the app with the new provisioning profile. Cost is $99/year, maximum of 100 devices, and devices can only be removed once a year. Each app expires after a few months.
Test Flight is an apk/ipa (app binary) distribution mechanism. So they may be accepting testflight's profile on their phones if their UDID was registered to receive drops of a particular app.
TestFlight can be used for distributing apps signed with Enterprise Certificates, i.e. apps that can't be distributed through AppStore.
Another possibility is that the app is run on only a few devices, registered as test devices on a regular Developer Account. If that's the case, the limit of numbers of devices should be noticed: 100 devices.
I'm developping an App in my company. We want to distribute this App to our customers but without using the AppStore from Apple, is it possible?
I heard about MDM (mobile device manager) but I'm not really sure if it will cover this need?
I heard also about Enterprise developer license for in house deployment but if I'm understanding correctly it means the App can be deployed only inside my company and not to our customers, is it correct?
Thanks for your clarifications.
Seb
If you are trying to get apps to customers without the App Store, you have options, but none of them are awesome.
There are many choices for over the air distribution of the binary, that really isn't the complicated part. You've got MDM solutions, HockeyKit, TestFlight, Manual server manipulation - all are fairly easy and well documented.
Where things get nasty is in the signing. If you definitely do not want to participate in the App Store environment (no app store, no Volume Purchase Program), you only have two real options:
Ad Hoc - Limited to 100 Devices. Devices must be explicitly added to a provision.
Enterprise - No device limit, devices do not need to explicitly added to provisions. In effect, these builds will run on any device; the caveat, you are not legally allowed to distribute these builds to anyone outside your company.
If you intend on developing an application for some other company and their employees, then your only viable option is to sign the final build with a signing certificate attached to said company's development account. The enterprise signing route is a really great approach, if you can get the company to sign all the paperwork to get their own developer account, owned by them.
For stock iOS devices, you really have only 4 choices:
1) Ad Hoc distribution to up to 100 total max devices per iOS Developer enrollment (including wireless Ad Hoc via manifest file & SSL.)
2) Enterprise distribution for distribution to employees of corporations with a D&B rating.
3) Apple's iTunes App store if your app is approved by Apple. (This includes the B2B program and account/password protected apps.) (This now also includes up to 1000 people using Apple's new Testflight service.)
4) Unlimited distribution to other people who have their own individual, company or enterprise iOS/Apple Developer enrollments. The distribution can be either as an Xcode project with source code or a pre-compiled library, or as an ipa or archive file that the customer can (re)codesign with their own Developer certificates. For applications priced at well over $99 per customer, the cost of this annual developer program enrollment might only be a slight additional cost to the customer (and given appropriate legal authorizations, might even be handled as an annual paid service.)
4 b.) ADDED UPDATE: As of Apple's release of Xcode 7 (in late 2015), anyone with just a free Apple ID can use Xcode 7 on their Mac to install apps from build-able Xcode projects directly to their own tethered iOS devices this way, with no need to pay $99 to Apple to enroll. See this answer.
This essentially allows unlimited distribution to anyone with physical access to a current Mac and who knows how to run Xcode.
Options (1), (2) and (4) do not require going through App store approval. There are no other options for distributing apps to stock OS iOS devices.
You could take a look at https://testflightapp.com/.
We use that a lot for customers that only need a app for testing doing the development phase and for apps that are used for conventions (limited time, limited number of units).
Testflight is very easy to use for both developers and end-users, but it is not very well suited for apps that are going to be used on a large numbers of devices, since all devices that are installed to needs to be in your provisioning profile which has a limited number of slots.
EDIT
The testfligt approch is no longer valid. You can now use the TestFlight integrated into itunesconnect. Alternatively you could integrate crashlytics.com, at use their distribution system. It works pretty weill
I am developing an iOS app of which my clients would like roughly 50 people to beta test. However, I don't want to have to keep adding UDIDs to my developer portal account and to generate a new provisioning profile each time. Is there a way in which I can distribute the beta without having to go through the aforementioned painful process of adding a new user? I'm thinking something automatic!
Look forward to hearing your responses!
Using a standard individual Developer enrollment, testing any app on stock OS iOS devices requires generating profiles with each device's UDID. No exceptions.
So you have to keep adding UDIDs to your developer portal (or let testflight gather them for you), or tell the client no more. (I would consider charging the client a sufficiently large additional amount for each extra device to be added after the initial batch, that you will become happy to do so, instead of it being a "painful" task.)
The Enterprise program can only be used for employees of the enrolled developer, not clients or customers. If your client has a D&B rating, then they might be able to enroll themselves in this program to allow distribution to their employees without gathering UDIDs.
The developer portal has an option in which you upload a list of your user's UDIDs (look in the device tab and click "Upload file"). Just prepare your beta user's UDIDs and upload once, then you can just generate an ad hoc profile once and wirelessly distribute this.
Note the file format should be (tab delimited):
device_id_hex_40_chars description_text
... ...
The first line of the file is ignored, so you can add a header.
If you're willing to pay the $299, then you can join the iOS Enterprise Developer program and distribute applications using iOS Enterprise distribution. This lets you distribute to an unlimited number of users.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/
Otherwise I'd suggest Testflight.
I have a question about the licenses of iOS and my application.
I am developing a application to run on a lot of iPad's for a consulters company. This company will download the (IPA) file from our web interface, and sync the devices on iTunes. Is this possible with the simple iOS Developer Program licence? I think that this is the famous ad-hoc, and not the in-house distribution from Enterprise Program. I am really confused about this licence and the Enterprise Program.
Thanks.
Since iOS 4 was released, you don't have to manually download the IPA and sync through iTunes, you can install by tapping on a link on a web page. You just need to create a plist file and point the link to it with a special pseudo-protocol. The details are in the developer library.
The individual / company developer account can handle that with ad hoc builds, but it sounds like the enterprise program is a better match for your needs. Ad hoc builds expire after a few months, it's limited to a hundred users and getting the UDIDs from the client can be a real pain. I've gone down that path before, and it's not unusual to receive UDIDs as screenshots of iTunes embedded in a Word document or incomplete/wrong, even after you give them step-by-step instructions on how to do it properly.
The enterprise program has its own drawbacks. It can take a while to get set up, and the company needs a DUNS number. However once it's set up, you'll find it easier to work with.
The standard developer program will let you distribute to 100 devices per year. That's the ad-hoc mechanism, and it isn't intended for what you're doing, although it certainly will work assuming you have fewer than 100 users.
The Enterprise program is designed for what you're doing, but costs more and has different details.
With the individual and company plans you have a limitation of 100 devices that you authorize with ad hoc distribution. Besides you have App Store access. If the number of devices is > 100 then applying to this program is not useful and then you must revert to the enterprise program.
The enterprise program gives you unlimited number of devices that can be authorized but no access to the App Store. In such case the consulter company must be enrolled to this program and can distribute the apps only to its employers or members. Finally this program provides other than ad-hoc distribution even in-house distribution, that is a form of automatic app distribution (like a simplified app store but for the company only). Finally note that in order to apply to this program the company must own a DUNS number.
Clearly if you want to have both options, that is in-house distribution and App Store access the company can enroll to the two programs.