Help understanding iOS deployment

[J. Landman Gay]

On 4/17/12 1:17 PM, Graham Samuel wrote:
> At the
> moment I am drowning in Apple documentation and Apple terminology -
> provisioning, certificates, profiles, requests, Team Agents (am I
> one?), etc. I have come to a grinding halt because what the Apple
> documentation says I should be seeing, I'm not seeing.

We've all been there. It isn't easy. I keep thinking there has to be a 
better way.

> 2. I reach the beta test stage and I want my friend to see the app.
> He is literally on the other side of the world. Can I send him a copy
> at this stage for him to load into his iPhone? I think I can if I
> have something called an iOS Distribution Certificate.

Distribution certificates are only for commercial release in the App 
Store. For testing you want a development certificate. These expire in a 
year but are renewable. You create one from the Development tab in the 
portal. Create a provisioning profile there and the portal will 
automatically create a "team provisioning profile" at the same time. Use 
the team one for your test apps, as that's the one that lets you add 
devices. You need to enter the device UDID into the Devices section on 
the web site. You can enter up to 100 devices per year.

It's easiest to record the IDs first and then create the profiles. But 
if you made the profiles and later need to add more devices, add them to 
the web site and then go to XCode, and "Refresh" the profile. That will 
add the new devices to the profile on your hard drive.

>
> 3. Suppose we iterate to the point where we believe the app is
> useful: the next thing is to distribute it to a few people in the
> profession my friend is in, so that the rough edges can be knocked
> off. Presumably this is just an extension of (2) but I have to
> register (do I?) the serial numbers or whatever of the new devices.

Right. Every testing device has to be entered in the portal. Then you 
either make new development provisioning profiles (which will include 
their devices) or you can refresh your existing profile via XCode. Once 
the profile has been updated to include the new devices, rebuild the 
standalone with the new profile.

>
> 4. Suppose we all think the thing is great but that it will never be
> the killer app, and indeed not more than 100 people will want to buy
> it (I use the number 100 because I think this is the ad hoc limit).
> Is it possible to get it out to up to 100 people without registering
> each and every device - and if not, do I have to maintain the list of
> devices?

If you want to continue to use the test profile, then you need to enter 
each device into the portal. Apple will keep the list, it's always 
visible there.

If you want to distribute freely without entering IDs then I think you 
need to use the Enterprise distribution method. That costs money but 
frees you from the necessity of entering all those device IDs. I think 
you can distribute up to 500 devices but there are restrictions on who 
can use the app. I'm not familiar enough with the Enterprise program to 
know much about how it works though, so I'm afraid you'd have to read up 
on that.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com