Developers who stumped up $99 to become part of the iPhone application ecosystem are to have their subscription extended for a couple of months, while rumours bubble that Apple is planning to offer a more exclusive iTunes experience. CNet reports that developers who signed up early to create apps for the iPhone have had their …

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Monday 16th March 2009 19:41 GMT Anonymous Coward

For you maybe....

did you really mean 'not unreasonable' as opposed to 'not insubstantial'

....or are we meant to be grateful for every opportunity to give Steve our cash

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Monday 16th March 2009 19:41 GMT Dave McEneaney

Corporate Apps

Here's a question. What's the deal with writing an app for the iPhone for exclusive use within a corporation? e.g., is there a way to push it out to hundereds of handsets WITHOUT using the iTunes App Store?

I'm fully aware of the jailbreak road, but imagine supporting hundereds of users who upgrade their firmware every couple of months then wonder why nothing works any more...

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Monday 16th March 2009 23:15 GMT Heff

@ Dave

Theres an inherent problem with this. In order to comply with your (in my view, logical and perfectly understandable) desires, Apple has to open the platform. it has to create some way for your corp to develop-distribute-multidistribute the application, and as soon as it does that, it loses control of itunes, as it wont take too long for some devious BOFH to rEngineer or Rip that process straight to piratebay et al, and then you have a nice, convinient way of being able to plug applications onto your un-jailbroken iphone without going through iTunes at all.

the only way I can see for apple to retain some kind of control here is by liasing with each individual business that wants to do this and probably creating a "closed" section of itunes, for BOFHtechs to upload their corporate wizardry to, that they can then have ihpone users download for free, upon submitting their corporate ID.

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Monday 16th March 2009 23:15 GMT andy

@Corporate Apps

I believe apps can be distributed via itunes without going through the store but you need to be registered as an enterprise developer with Apple and have a certificate from them to sign apps...

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Monday 16th March 2009 23:25 GMT Rolf Howarth

Re: corporate apps

The app store does indeed offer a way to offer apps for use within an organisation. As I understand it you still have to through the app store, or at least something very like it (an un-jailbroken won't run anything which isn't signed, and the app store is the only way to get apps on the iPhone) but you get a private area that no-one else has access to and don't have to charge for the downloads.

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Monday 16th March 2009 23:55 GMT Craig Graham

Ad-hoc

Any iPhone dev can distribute without the app store - it's called ad-hoc distribution and it's fully supported by Apple. You email the device ID of the iPhone to the developer, they register it with their app profile, then email you the app - you can then install it using iTunes. It's all official and above board, but mostly used for beta test 'coz unless you have an enterprise dev account, you're limited as to how many copies of each app you can distribute this way.

- Paris, because she doesn't really know what she's talking about either....

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Tuesday 17th March 2009 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward

Moaning minnies

"they didn't realise that the $99 was an annual subscription, rather than a one-time fee, and that fact isn't obvious from the sign-up procedure"

It was perfectly obvious to me when I signed up. Maybe they should check the small print a bit better.

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Tuesday 17th March 2009 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward

I paid my $99 in Jan

And still no access. No repsonse to my emails either.

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Tuesday 17th March 2009 11:00 GMT Adam T

Complete BS

It's made quite clear that the $99 is for 12 months access at sign-up. Add to the fact that it's plastered all over the dev portal.

When you click "I have read the Terms and Conditions", you should bloody well make sure you've read them. Idiots who don't shouldn't be in business.

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