iPhone:Can one mac be used for two business purpose? - iphone

I have a small doubt, so apologies first.
I am creating an iPhone application using my Macbook. I want to upload it into AppStore after some days by creating a developer certificate and use provisioning profile. My friend wants to create his own iPhone application and wants to upload to AppStore for him personally, but he wants to use my same Macbook, but he may create his own dev certificate etc. I hope this is possible. Can we both use a same Macbook to develop different business(myself and my friend's) applications? I'm just curious to ask this doubt.
One more question,
Can we submit an iPhone application into AppStore without having own website page? Is it mandatory to have my own web site page for uploading an application into AppStore?

As long as all of the right pieces are installed, you could definitely share one Mac. You'd need all of the appropriate provisioning profiles installed in XCode, and the private keys / signing certificates used to generate them installed in the Keychain.
Going with separate user accounts might be a good idea, if just so that neither of you gets confused and accidentally builds their app with the other person's profile. But there shouldn't be any technical reason why you couldn't do this with a single user.

You would both need to have different users but apart from that, I can't see a problem.
As far as I know, the certificates and public private keys are per user.
As for the second question, I have no idea, sorry!

For first question:
Sure, it is possible! Its all a matter of creating different Certificate and Provisioning and When you build the project making sure you use the correct certificate to Code Sign!
Second Question:
You don't need a website of your own. I've come across many developers who uses their Blogspot address!
But if you are serious and look serious, get a domain and a simple site :)
Cheers

Related

Will Appstore accept this kind of application?

So I already have 2 versions out on appstore..
One app is a free but limited version.
The other is a paid unlimited. The basic layout..
I have had questions from companies wanting to buy the app and give to their employees. So they don't have to buy the app with their personal accounts..
So I was thinking of releasing a 3rd version that prompts the user for a license key on first start, if the key is valid the app starts and works until reinstalled or w/e. If the key is invalid the app just keeps prompting for a valid license.
Now I remembered reading somewhere that apple wouldn't allow apps that had no public function or something like that. Which this app wont have unless u have a valid license..
But since I do also provide a valid public version of the app, will this one get accepted? Or have they removed theese rules?
Any insight in the matter would be helpful!
Edit:
Forgot to mention that the reason im looking to use the license is because i have the same app for android and want the companies to be able to buy for both device types, not just apple devices.
Thanks
I believe you should use the B2B functionality in ITunes Connect: http://developer.apple.com/support/ios/volume-purchase-program.html
Also check: https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/volume/
I did something very similar to this some time ago, they seemed ok with it (then at least), they just asked for a license key in the complementary info (during the app submission) to go through all their usual validation tests.
Klassmating has an app in the app store that has no public functionality unless you are a student at a specific university. So it seems like you can have apps like that.
Without knowing exactly, I would assume Apple would reject such an app from the store (mainly because it would allow you to sell applications "behind their back" - i.e. sell licence keys and not using in-app purchase) :-)
However, there are two possible solutions to your problem that come to my mind:
Create and distribute gift codes (would be a problem if you had to give out too many of them).
Do an ad-hoc distribution of your app to the companies. Basically they would need your application bundle and an ad-hoc mobile provision file. Then they can simply install your application by dragging it to iTunes.
There are different official iPhone application distribution methods.
In which for your current requirement,I suppose you can use the Custom B2B Apps,where you can deliver apps directly to your business customers who have a Volume Purchase Program account.You can get more information from the link provided above.
cheers!
Yes, I too have had an app in the app store which works like this. You have to provide them with a key/licence to access the app functionality so they can test it fully.
I've had an app rejected for this very reason - required a username and password, not a licence key, but was free. They said in contravened the licence terms regarding in app purchases.
Mine allowed time limited free trials from within the app, but full functionality was restricted to purchases outside the app. Apple wanted their 30% cut of the subscription cost so it was no dice for us.
On the other hand, the app store review process is seemingly entirely random, so who knows.

iPhone Provisioning: What's it all about?

Grepping around, I see that I'm not AT ALL alone in being... challenged... by the process of setting up an iPhone app, getting it to run, giving it my testers, and so on.
I've gotten it to work. Somehow I emailed a copy or two to testers, and eventually got my li'l app into the store, and that was fine.
But I can't say a really, deeply understand it! (And I don't do iOS dev every day. Even now my recollection of what I did is kind-of hazy.)
I'm moderately capable of understanding things, if presented, well, you know, in a way I can understand.
Can anyone point me to a crystal clear explanation of what provisioning actually is?
I feel that if I understood it, the recipes to do it would be obvious.
Thanks!
Development provisioning profiles sign your application, and allow the phone to know it's OK to run. These days, XCode automatically makes a Development Profile for you (the "Team Profile").
The other kind of profile, when you are talking about other people running you app, is a Distribution Profile. You need a Distribution profile for either giving your app to the store, or for giving to beta-testers.
The profile is what allows other people's phones to know it's OK to run your app, basically it includes a list of device ID's approved to run that application on the phone in question, along with being signed so that the phone knows the whole thing is valid.
If you read advice around the web concerning distribution, it's easy to get confused because things used to be a lot harder. You used to have to send Distribution certificates separately from your app to beta testers. These days the certificates are included in your app bundle so you don't have to worry about that.
Furthermore, sending an AdHoc build can be all kinds of unpleasant - for testers using Windows. These days, the absolute best way to do beta testing is have a link on the web that uses the Enterprise ad-hoc deployment feature, to let a user with iOS4 or higher automatically download and install your application with no iTunes or copying work at all. In fact I would at this point refuse to use beta testers running windows who were not on iOS4 or higher.
The guide link posted should have a section about the enterprise ad-hoc, but basically the way it works is there's a small plist file the phone downloads, that has a link to the IPA file containing your app. You point the phone to a specially formatted link to the plist file and the phone fetches the application directly.
All of this is predicated on using the "Build and Archive" option for building any ad-hoc distribution build. You should do that anyway because it also saves out a symbol file for you to use in debugging crash reports.
EDIT:
Here's a little more detail on enterprise deployment (which works for any registered developer, not just Enterprise registered developers):
http://jeffreysambells.com/posts/2010/06/22/ios-wireless-app-distribution/
The Developer Program User Guide should be helpful.

iPhone deployment management

I have a little app that I want (potentially) a lot of my clients to test and give feedback on before launch, do I really need to setup a massive list of UUID's in the provisioning profile and build against that certificate, email them the .APP file and the certificate?
I was hoping for a, perhaps, private app store? But I cannot seem to find much on this topic
Any advice or help is greatly appreciated here :)
Cheers,
Mark
It seems that even with the Enterprise option, you'll still need to distribute a provisioning profile:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf (particularly Chapter 5)
However, it looks like you won't need to add each device to this provisioning profile if it's an Enterprise profile, but the users themselves (or the IT support staff) would have to add the provisioning profile to each machine with iTunes.
Without Enterprise profile, unfortunately the answer is YES. And with enterprise profile, the scenario is already explained in previous answer.
If they all have iPhone SDK installed in their Mac, and if your app doesn't require device-specific features (camera, accelerometer...) then you can just zip your app folder in your iPhone simulator's Application Support folder and send it to all your clients.
It works great for a number of my clients, especially to validate the user interface.

iPhone using same certificate on multiple computers with different accounts

I have looked around here to see if somebody has asked this question before but nobody really has the same situation so i would like to now how to do the following:
At home i have an iMac on which i do my iPhone development. I can deploy the application on my own iPhone without any problem.
At work i have a colleague who owns a Macbook Pro and i would like to use my certificate to deploy the application on his iPhone.
The tricky part is that we (of course) have different accounts on the computers and i don't want to create an account on his Macbook Pro just for this.
I have read in several places that you can export the certificate (in my case from my iMac) and import it onto his computer, a detailed description can be found here: http://www.theevilboss.com/2009/06/iphone-sdk-development-on-multiple.html) but does this scenario also work for different accounts?
If not, how can i do this?
A second question (and which might also solve my first question), does every member on the development team need to have a personal account for the Provisioning portal? And thus pay the development fee?, i have a company registration and i can register 100 devices but when i want to add a person using the Member center i get the feeling that this person needs to register himself first and pay the development fee)
The quickest smartes and easiest solution.
Saved me hours of searching and implemnting different tactics and techniques
iphone sdk development on multiple mac machines
Two ways to do this:
First: add your buddy to your 'team' in the iphone developer portal. he then will have to generate his own certificates. There is no additional charge for this. This makes sense if you want to give him source code and let him use Xcode to work with / debug the app. If you don't want to give him source code, do the second choice.
Second: if he doesn't need to debug and use Xcode, just add his phone UUID to your 'Devices' in the portal, generate an Ad Hoc Distribution Certificate and then make an Ad Hoc build for anything you want to give him to test/try out. He then just uses itunes to copy the ad hoc certificate and the app to his phone. There are instructions in the portal for making the ad hoc builds.

iPhone Ad Hoc distribution without expiration

The background story:
I work for a company that develops and manufactures a commercial product which can have up to 100+ dedicated PC's in a farm.
We only get a handful of new customers per year.
We developed an iPod/iPhone app that lets us send commands to the farm and pull data. Our parent company has major concerns about putting this app on the AppStore. (I really dont know the details of the paranoia, but I know its probably not a winnable battle).
We planned to distribute the App via Ad Hoc using ONE or TWO new iPods each time we sell a "farm". I have just learned that the Ad Hoc distribution expires after 90 days.
The Question:
Are there any alternatives for permanently loading our app onto an iPod Touch or iPhone without going through the App Store?
Our app has absolutely no use to anyone without our other product. We only plan to load this app on a handful of iPods a year. I doubt this matters, but maybe somebody has another solution?
Apple has an an enterprise distribution program, which might allow what you're trying to do. There's also jailbreaking the iPods. That would let you run unsigned code, so you could build your apps without ad-hoc certs.
I know this post has been marked as answered but i am in the same situation so i though i should share what i have experienced.
There is NO legal solution for this. You can't have an app distributed with out the annoying expiry dates.
I have been onto the ADC support and you can't get an extension on the certificates, you can renew for more than 1 year at a time and they have no interest in helping you.
I have clients who will not let the content of their apps hit the app store. There for they are stuck with sending all the devices back to renew certificates (i know you don't need to xcode etc.. to install the certs but try getting end users to do it...).
I am in the luck situation that i can try send the shell of an app to the appstore and then once verified (i.e. once off login - ssl to our server with the device id and a guid password) the app will download all the sensitive content to the phone.
I don't know if this will work for all apps - i.e. loading classes or libraries dynamically but for me it is only the content that is sensitive.
if anyone would like more info i am happy to talk it over, but i haven't tried getting the app through the store yet. I will try soon, so i can keep you posted if you are interested.
cheers
kle
As of September 2010, Apple has removed the 500-employee requirement. Go nuts!
See my post about setting up an Enterprise Program account (which moderators keep trying to close!):
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1876333/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-an-iphone-app-into-the-app-store-closed
Issues with getting an Enterprise Program account:
-You need 500 employees.
-You can only provide the app to employees.
Make sure you check the detailed terms and conditions of using Ad Hoc distributions to be sure you are allowed to distribute them as you are doing. On the face of it you are probably okay (Apple link here), but worth checking the fine print. I know the Enterprise Program had a lot of fussy fine print, e.g. needing procedures to recover apps from employees when they leave the company, etc.
If you jailbreak the iTouch/iPhone then you can easily disable Apple's code signing checks. You can then build your app and load it onto the device as normal without worrying about expiry or anything else.
The only problem is that jailbreaking on newer batches of the 3GS is not particularly end-user friendly. For something to give to a client I think you would need to stick with the iTouch.