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We have an iOS app that we want to distribute with B2B. We have many clients who are currently using the app. Each client has hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of devices.

Not every client wants to upgrade to a new version when we release one.

How can we handle situation like this?

pjs
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h82w8
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1 Answers1

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This is quite hard to answer without complete knowledege of your needs, but I'll try to suggest something.

I worked on application that was licensed to our clients and distributed under various names, with different feature sets and custom desin etc. So for each new client I created a separate build target in XCode, so I could assign unique name and bundle Id and define supported features and other stuff that made it distinct from other's clients versions. Then you're able to release new version just for the client you need simply by picking the target and configuration when creating an archive for distribution.

However this approach works when there's some reasonable number of clients (let's say up to 10 or 20). If you need to support too many variants it would become unmanagable. In that case I'd think of creating some server application, where you could manage configurations for all clients in some more covenient way and integrate it into XCode build process. I don't know about any, but I would not be surprised if there's even some existing service for this purpose.

Matthes
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  • Thank you for your response. The problem is that the software basically the same with an exception of new features that were added to a new version and that may not get approved by apple. I read that if I get my clients to purchase enterprise development license i will be able to give them an IPA file with the version that they use and they can distribute it internally using their own servers. That would be ideal but I cannot verify that this is 100% legal. – h82w8 Aug 10 '15 at 20:59
  • Yes, I can approve that. Enterprise licence means that Apple doesn't care that much about all that stuff and lets you or a company be responsible for all legal aspects. In that scenario you'll just upload your app IPA file to the corporate "app store" and don't care about Apple's point of view. – Matthes Aug 10 '15 at 21:57
  • thank you, i will try to locate some official document stating that – h82w8 Aug 11 '15 at 13:51