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I would like to distribute an App preview to a musician that I am working with. He is not an employee of my company but offered me to do the game sountrack for free.

I have checked on the iOS Provisioning Portal and found the following dislcaimer:

"Important: Your iOS Developer Program membership can be terminated if you provide pre-release Apple Software to anyone other than employees, contractors, and members of your organization who are registered as Apple Developers and have a demonstrable need to know or use Apple Software in order to develop and test applications on your behalf. Unauthorized distribution of Apple Confidential Information (including pre-release Apple Software) is prohibited and may subject you to both civil and criminal liability."

According to this I can only distribuite preview apps to test developer that I somehow employ. This excludes the case of friends working for free on non coding matters (e.g. musician).

Does anyone of you had a similar concern?

Thank you very much!

EDIT2: I posted again this question on new post with additional details as Apple replied to me on this matter and did provide a different answer than the ones below. I have tried to add comments to those answers but this question doesn't seem to have any more visibility and need to solve this quickly, so thought that that was the way to go.. let me know if this is not correct. Thanks!

Community
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mm24
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  • I have interpreted that as Apple Software such as everything that goes into the Apple Store.. I am just concerned that some of the legal terms in the developer contract imply this. – mm24 Apr 30 '12 at 09:47

2 Answers2

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That's for pre-release Apple Software such as the beta a new version of iOS. You can send your own app to your friend so that he can test it, but you can't give him access to pre-release Apple Software and other confidential information.

Here is a guide that shows how you can send the app to beta testers, and here is a web application that makes the process easier.

Also Apple's Tools Workflow Guide says:

it’s always a good idea to perform wider testing with a representative sample of your app’s potential users. Such testing may reveal issues that surface only with particular usage patterns. An app tester is a potential user of your app who is not part of your development team but is willing to test it before it’s released through the App Store.) Adding app testers to your group of testers exposes your app to a variety of usage styles. You can collect and analyze crash reports (also known as crash logs) from these testers to resolve execution problems.

sch
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  • Thanks a lot for the clear answer :). I am sorry to have misunderstood and asked this here, but I got scared from that text. Thanks a lot. – mm24 Apr 30 '12 at 09:56
  • Sorry for the follow up, I did post an edit on my question after receiving an answer from Apple. – mm24 May 06 '12 at 18:26
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Nope, I think you misunderstood. You can distribute your own app as an Ad-Hoc to your friends whoever is a developer or not. However, there's a 100 devices limitation. And Apple is encourage you to do so before submit your app to App Store.

You cannot test your app the same way the users of your app will use it. They have different data and different usage patterns. Before publishing your app on the App Store, put it through real-world testing to find and solve as many problems as possible.

You can refer to THIS DOC to find out how to publish your App for user testing.

Kjuly
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  • Sorry.. Thank you very much for this answer. I have voted +1 as I appreciate the collaboration and I am greatful for your insights. I was very worried for this matter and you all helped to clarify this quickly. Thanks! – mm24 Apr 30 '12 at 09:57
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    It is true that ad-hoc distribution is the best answer. The link to the docs has gone bad, apple doesn't like posting their docs outside of their internal site, so.. go to the developer.apple.com site, login to the member center and search for "App Distribution Guide" that will explain everything. – Deemoe Jun 01 '15 at 06:41