What's the point of the provisioning process Apple makes you complete in order to test your apps on an iOS device?

Question

Today I walked to through the process of getting my iOS device connected to my computer and running my app. To do that, I had to...

1. Obtain a developer certificate
2. Assign the device to my team
3. Obtain my app ID
4. and create a provisioning profile

While I understand the process and was able to successfully get my device connected, I don't at all understand the point of all this. Can anyone explain the point of each step in that process and why Apple has us do this?

Thanks so much in advance for your help! It's important to me to understand this stuff at least at a high level.

Answer 1

Apple just wants to torture the developers :)

Joking aside, I don't know why. There's no official explanation why you need those steps, here's my speculation.

Apple wants to make sure that

1. only the developer registered to Apple can freely install
2. onto his or her i-Devices
3. applications of his or her own applications .

This is presumably to forbid the distribution of apps outside of Apple's own App Store. If any of these three steps is not required, it's easy to imagine how you can "abuse" the developer status to install lots of apps without going through App Store.

This explains why you need to do 1, 2 and 3. In order for XCode and the i-Device itself to check it, you need a provisioning profile. This explains the point 4.

Answer 2

As a rough explanation.. the device only runs signed apps. Your developer certificate (along with your private key) signs your app so it can run on your device. (or other development devices of your nomination)

If you beta test, your Ad Hoc certificate + provisioning profile will allow all devices with their UDID in the profile to run that app. The beta testers don't need your developer certificate, just their device UDID embedded in the profile.

When you distribute to the app store, you use a Distribution profile (along with the team agent key), and that needs additional signing (co-signing?) from Apple before that code can run on the device. Because Apple signed it, the device doesn't care what UDIDs are allowed.

Answer 3

Apple has made a business decision to maintain tight control over developers and apps both during and after their app development. This means that at any given point in time, they have a tight connection between a developer, app, devices, and the app's users, be it through the adhoc distribution mechanism, or through purchases that users make in iTunes Store. We may only speculate what they internally thought that the goals and benefits here are, but as the market has shown, the outcome is beneficial to all parties, as they have shot from oblivion to one of the most popular smartphone platforms in a few years.

One quite straightforward goal is that they intend to maintain control of the distribution channel and make sure the app cannot be officially distributed through any side channels and they have control over all the money that moves, hence the 100-deviceIDs-per-developeraccount limit (so you couldn't distribute your app outside Apple's channel, yet the 100 devices should be sufficient for closed testing).