iPhone kiosk

[Mark Wilcox]

Jailbreaking is a pain - do you really need it? I ask because iOS has a
kiosk mode - look up "Guided Access". If you have to jailbreak you
always get new devices with the latest firmware and then have to wait
for someone to create a new jailbreak.

If you retain control/ownership of the devices then you can use an
enterprise developer account for production and manage updates with a
Mobile Device/Application Management solution - MDM can also trigger
"single app mode" (not sure how this is different from Guided Access)
remotely. There are third party solutions and Apple provides a basic
free one (called Profile Manager) that ships as part of OS X Server
(which you can have a copy of for free with an iOS developer account).

Updating apps by simply downloading a new stackfile is entirely doable
in an iOS device - as stated by others, it's just against the app store
rules. That doesn't let you update LiveCode itself though, in case you
ever need that.

I think the key consideration around updates is how the app will get
updated if it is always running. For that I think you probably need a
MDM solution so you can release the device from single app mode, update
it and put it back into single app mode.

Of course the devil is in the details but I recommend looking into all
of the legitimate solutions before going down the jailbreak route.

-- 
  Mark Wilcox
  mark at sorcery-ltd.co.uk

On Mon, Aug 25, 2014, at 06:45 AM, Richard Miller wrote:
> Hoping someone here knows the answer to this. I realize it's an unusual 
> situation.
> 
> I am setting up a jail-broken iPhone with a LC app. This phone will be 
> set to boot directly into the LC app. The phone will only ever be used 
> for this one purpose. Think of it as an iPhone kiosk. Users will not be 
> able to access any functions on the phone outside of the app.
> 
> Once I have completed all the development work on the first phone, I 
> want to clone this phone to other iPhones so that each is an exact copy. 
> Is that possible? Can I create an iTunes backup of the first phone and 
> then use that backup to "restore" it to new iPhones?
> 
> Second question is in regards to distributing and updating the app.
> 
> The app itself is not to be sold through the App Store. My business 
> model is based on distributing these iPhones (with the app 
> pre-installed). Again, the phone will never be used for any purpose 
> outside of my app. The phone will not be used to make calls, but it does 
> need to access the internet. Most importantly, my app needs to be kept 
> updated. Is there some way to automatically update the app (even through 
> a jail-broken means)? I imagine larger corporations have exclusive apps 
> that are not distributed publicly and are kept updated. How does that
> work?
> 
> Thanks,
> Richard Miller
> 
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