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Few questions regarding the apple developer license

Discussion in 'iOS and tvOS' started by jimma, Sep 24, 2014.

  1. jimma

    jimma

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2013
    Posts:
    28
    Hello,

    I am planning to make an app for iPad using Unity. I have Windows, a Mac mini and Unity Pro. Currently I do not have an apple developer account but planning to buy one.

    This is my first time making/ deploying an app for any iDevice so please spare me if my questions sound lame. Also I already looked into and researched on other similar forums but I just want to make sure that nothing got changed recently by Apple in terms of testing/ deploying your app to an iDevice

    So here are some questions I am kinda confused about.

    1. What do we need the Apple developer account for? Do we need it only to publish the app on the store or also for other purposes? For now I just want to make my app with Unity and test it on my Ipad using Mac mini. But would I still need the Apple's developer account? I don't want to publish the app on the store but I would want to test the app on like 50 iPad devices.

    2. If I do buy the developers account which I would eventually, what are the other advantages of buying it apart from publishing your app on the store?

    3. I came across something called as "testflight" used for deploying your apps on iDevices. However I don't exactly understand what it is used for?

    Hopefully someone with some experience with iOS development could help me clear my doubts.

    Thanks!!!
     
  2. AcidArrow

    AcidArrow

    Joined:
    May 20, 2010
    Posts:
    11,631
    Yes you do need an Apple developer account to test on your device.

    Testing.

    You can use it to send builds to other people to test for you.

    In general, testing is not as simple as I just build and send to the device (at least in the beginning). You have to add these devices (the UDIDs) to Apple's back end and then generate a provisioning profile that contains those UDIDs so that you can sign your builds with it, so that you can then install your app to the devices.

    It's a mildly convoluted process but it's not that hard.

    Bottom line is, you do need a developer account.
     
    jimma likes this.
  3. jimma

    jimma

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2013
    Posts:
    28

    That helps a lot. Thanks!!