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Because that would violate the Apple rules (and also be practically infeasible for technical reasons). You can officially (as a matter of policy and enforced b

Because that would violate the Apple rules (and also be practically infeasible for technical reasons). You can officially (as a matter of policy and enforced by iOS) distribute apps in 3 ways: 1. Through the App Store 2. As an enterprise developer distributing apps to employees of the same company through an enterprise App Store to an enterprise enrolled iOS device 3. As a developer to a test device where the test device is 1 out of 100 registered devices in your Apple developer account The only other alternative I'm aware of is to jailbreak the device and distribute via Cydia.

jsrn 12y ago
Regarding your (2.) - just to clarify this for others: With an enterprise provisioning profile, you can deploy your app to an arbitrary number of devices. These devices do not need to be known before via UDID (as with normal OTA provisioning). You can just upload the app to a server and ask people to download. So the devices do not technically have to belong to the same organization (even if this is perhaps Apple's intent). E.g., a friend of mine uses an enterprise account which they aquired for their university to deploy an app for a study (for data gathering). The subjects who install the app and enter their data are not all part of the university. Apple was informed about this use case and they did not have anything against it. But, AFAIK Apple centrally checks the validity of the profile with each download and thus they are certainly able to detect if you use your enterprise profile to circumvent the appstore.
captainmuon 12y ago
OK, but in all those cases the primary developer compiles and signs the app with their developer's key, which is restricted by Apple. What I was thinking about was (simplified): - The primary developer distributes a non-runnable version of the app. Say they just dump the source somewhere and declare it public domain. - A user registers as a developer with Apple, downloads Xcode and the app's source, and then builds and signs it themself and places it on their iOS device. The user pretends to be debugging the app he just compiled. No compiled or signed code is distributed, nothing is placed in the app store, etc.

jsrn 12y ago

Regarding your (2.) - just to clarify this for others: With an enterprise provisioning profile, you can deploy your app to an arbitrary number of devices. These devices do not need to be known before via UDID (as with normal OTA provisioning). You can just upload the app to a server and ask people to download. So the devices do not technically have to belong to the same organization (even if this is perhaps Apple's intent). E.g., a friend of mine uses an enterprise account which they aquired for their university to deploy an app for a study (for data gathering). The subjects who install the app and enter their data are not all part of the university. Apple was informed about this use case and they did not have anything against it. But, AFAIK Apple centrally checks the validity of the profile with each download and thus they are certainly able to detect if you use your enterprise profile to circumvent the appstore.

captainmuon 12y ago

OK, but in all those cases the primary developer compiles and signs the app with their developer's key, which is restricted by Apple. What I was thinking about was (simplified): - The primary developer distributes a non-runnable version of the app. Say they just dump the source somewhere and declare it public domain. - A user registers as a developer with Apple, downloads Xcode and the app's source, and then builds and signs it themself and places it on their iOS device. The user pretends to be debugging the app he just compiled. No compiled or signed code is distributed, nothing is placed in the app store, etc.