I have to create interactive animations for iPad for a private firm. I have to install the app on all employee's IPad. I dont want to put it on app store. As its only private to a firm.
What shld I do?
If there are less than 100 iOS devices total over the year, and these private apps can be reinstalled or re-provisioned around a couple times per year, the private firm can use Ad Hoc app deployment under a standard iOS company enrollment, which is cheaper and involves less paperwork than Enterprise distribution.
You should have the company apply for their own company developer enrollment so you don't use up your allotment of 100 test devices, which could put you out of business (for up to a year) if your current test device has a hardware problem.
This: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf
Or if you are limited on funds, you can add each iPad as a development device and install it manually. Headache, but free.
Related
My organisation is planning to buy Enterprise program from Apple. We have a doubt regarding max number of installation for application.
Inside apple website they have define some installation values like this:
Apple Watch 100 per year
iPhone 100 per year
iPad 100 per year
iPod touch 100 per year
Does these means we are limited to 100 installation totally in each devices for all our Apps i.e., 400 total installation possible for multiple apps.
Can someone explain in detail?
Thanks in advance,
The enterprise program does not have those limitations. Those are limitations for registered devices on a standard Apple developer account. On an enterprise account, you don't need to register devices before you can install your self developed apps on them. The device user needs to "trust" your developer profile, but that's it.
No limitation on devices that I am aware of - as there are companies using this type of developer account / enterprise distribution profile to distribute apps to thousands of employees.
I think the main limitation is that you should only use it for distributing your app to employees or contractors that should have access. In other words, don't try to use it to set up your own app store distributing custom apps to random people. Also, the enterprise distribution profiles expire after a year, so there is ongoing maintenance to keep the apps running on devices.
Heyo Guys
I got a question about the deployment of my App. I am currently doing contracting for a small to medium size business. The app is (as the title suggests) developped for iOS.
The app should be for internal use only so putting it on the app store would not be a good idea.
I have read about the enterprise developer program which sounds pretty much like the thing I need except for 2 aspects :
1. 299 per year
2. Enterprise apps are intended for really big companies.
Is there any other way to distribute the app to the 10+ people working at the business I am currently working for ?
Thanks for your advice
EDIT : Thanks for all your answers. I have plans to then further distribute the app to other companies (the app is for driving schools) so that means that there would again be a problem if each of those companies had to buy a licence in order to use my app
It doesn't matter about the size of the company, If they want an internal application not hosted on the App Store then the Enterprise program is the way to go.
This is something that the client should be paying for though, they could then use a service like Hockey to host their applications for employees.
If the company only needed the app for say 10 devices, they could technically just get away with an AdHoc build but there are drawbacks:
AdHoc builds are intended for testing rather than full scale distribution.
The devices would have to be registered on the developer portal, this means that if a new device needs adding then you would have to add it then re-generate a new provisioning profile.
You're limited on how many devices you can distribute to.
The provisioning profile will expire after 3 months.
Provisioning profiles currently expire after a year just like enterprise profiles however Apple have been known to change this.
If it's 10 people, you can ask them to hand over their devices and you install using Xcode. For 50 you can make them beta testers, but it is a pain. Testflight will work, but you have to upload a version once a month which they have to download. All of these might be against your license.
It would be by far the best if the company you are working for buys an enterprise license. (YOU can't buy the enterprise license, because the users are not YOUR employees).
You can distribute via TestFlight, but those 10 users will eat in to your limit of 25 total Beta testers.
You can explicitly take the target users' device UUIDs and provision your app to be able to run on them. Then, you can create ad-hoc deployments of your app which can be installed directly on the target devices using iTunes, or distribute them using something like Crashlytics.
You can add 100 devices per year as a registered developer.
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
Supposing the following scenario:
Company A asks company B to produce an IPad App for them. Company A only wants to use it for themselves on a very limited amount of IPads (less than 100). Company A is not necessarily interested in offering it on the app store.
How can company B distribute the app (sell it) to company A? It could install the App on the iPads via ad hoc provisioning profile, but this is only meant for testing and the app can't be used once the profile expires.
How can B legally install this app on the iPads without the app expiring after one year?
When using the app store, is there an option to sell the app only to this company, or to specific users via the app store, when the companies are not located in the U.S. (I heard about B2B distribution which can only be used in the U.S.)
Would the enterprise distribution be the option to choose? But then company A must have an IOS developer enterprise program ticket, so that it can install the app on its iPads, and not company B, right? Yet company B is the developer here... Or would it be legal, if company B had the IOS developer enterprise program ticket, installed the app on some iPads and sold the iPads to company A?
Enterprise distribution is exactly what you want in this situation.
Company A can participate in the enterprise developer program and install proprietary apps on any of their devices freely:
https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/
Note: I've worked on several proprietary apps that we simply released through the app store at a price that would prevent others from purchasing it. It's the easiest way for the client's employees to get the app on their device and it has resulted in new business for us when others have seen what we've done.
I am currently having an app developed that I intend to sell, it will be for a specific type of busbiness and not the eveyday iPad users. With that being said I am not a large enterprise, so I cant urchase that, I do not feel for the price that I want to sell the app that it would be beneficail to place it on the app store, roughly around $1,000 for the application since it competes against solutions that cost 25k. I heard you could sell yourself on a website, but how could that be done? How can I sell a app without the appstore?
And yes I say addhoc, which only allows up to 100 ipads, enterprise soultion I do not fall in, since I looking at selling and not internal distribution and the appstore might not be the best bet for my app solution.
Thanks
A new developer
Ad Hoc apps are not only limited to 100 devices, but expire (once or more per annum), and thus need to be re-signed with new provisions periodically to continue to function.
There is one more option for apps over $1000 in price.
For apps over $1000, another alternative to scale above 100 customers, as well as outside the App store even on stock OS devices, is to have each end customers buy their own $99/annum iOS Developer enrollment. That's not only less than 10% of the price of apps over $1k, and possibly less than the annual maintenance fee on the competing $25k software package, but also less than Apple's 30% App store percentage!
You could package your app as a shared library (without source code) inside a customized project, and just have the customer (or some developer service, such as yours for an annual fee) renew their certificates and provisions, and rebuild and reinstall the app, as long as the customer(s) keeps renewing their iOS enrollment.
You've pretty much covered all of the available options.
As such, the app store seems to be the only suitable one, unless you have a Dun & Bradstreet Number and don't mind purchasing an enterprise developer license. (These are now only $299 that said, which seems like a small outlay considering the proposed cost of your app.)