Issuing iOS projects to remote devices before going to the store

[Crivens]

So I've published a couple of things on the iOS store, but now I'm doing an app for a friends company. I've given them the apk for Android which works fine on their devices, but they also want to install it on an iPad to demo to clients.

The problem is they are in another country so I can't install it personally on their iPad. It isn't jailbroken either (I assume this is easy if it is JB).

So the question is how do I get it on their iPad without publishing to the store (they don't want that yet as this is an early version to demo to customers)? Can I somehow remotely activate their iPad to my developer account? And if so what do I then need to send to them and what do they have to do?

Any suggestions would be great thanks!

Cheers

[Wampus]

This is possible but involves quite a few steps. Get ready to engage your patience!

You'll need to publish a special copy of the app on the store that only testers can install. They'll need their own Mac and iTunes. They'll also need to install a provisioning profile that you can give them. They won't need Xcode installed. If they let you remote access their machines you can do most of the steps yourself on their behalf, although physically connecting their idevices will need to be done by them. Official guide is here: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/ToolsLanguages/Conceptual/YourFirstAppStoreSubmission/TestYourApponManyDevicesandiOSVersions/TestYourApponManyDevicesandiOSVersions.html. You may find some tutorial articles or videos to help.

[Crivens]

Sounds complicated. I just read about adhoc distribution. Sounds interesting in that it looks like it works through iTunes only (not even a mac I think).

Either that or an app called TestFlight which can do it just through the app apparently.

Will look into it all a bit more tomorrow

Cheers

[Wampus]

Oh, I've never tried it with iTunes not running on a Mac. That's useful to know.

[bigtunacan]

I have heard great things about Test Flight, but never used it.  I use an open source tool called betabuilder.

http://www.hanchorllc.com/betabuilder-for-ios/

[Falstaff]

Just wanted to say TestFlight is amazing. It'll help with this. You still have to provision the device id, but you get the device id automatically from them when they install the testflight app. You send them an invite, they can then install and use the testflight app to see what the latest builds are they can test. You can also send out notifications when you upload new builds, and watch in realtime as people get notified, open the email, and install the new app, all w/o changing your app's code. If you import their library and make a couple minor changes to your xcode project you can also see metrics of when users are running the app, or use it to gather feedback from them in-app.

All in all it's really a great offering.