iPhone Ad Hoc distribution without expiration

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

See my post about setting up an Enterprise Program account (which moderators keep trying to close!): http://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.

Answer 3

How did you fixed this problem ? I am in a similar situation and I could not find any "legal" solution yet.

Answer 4

Hi, 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

Answer 5

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.