Industry guru Dave Taylor offers tech support on technical and business topics, including iPhone, iPod, Microsoft Windows, Sony PSP, cellphones, online advertising, CSS, Web design, business, Unix, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, and shell script programming.     


Is there any way for my friends to have a free copy of my iPhone app?

I've been reading your cool iPhone app developer series on your business blog and am inspired to dig into the Apple iPhone SDK and write a few games. I'd love to charge a few bucks for my games, but want to make copies available to my friends for free. Is there any way to do that?


Dave's Answer:

Thanks for the kudos on the iPhone app developer interviews, I've both been enjoying connecting with the developers of some of my favorite Apple iPhone applications, but have also been learning quite a bit from them too.

For example, two weeks ago I would have said "no, there's no solution" when presented with the question you submitted. Now, however, I know that there is a way to have an iPhone app with a price tag and still make it authorize for a small number of friends and app reviewers. I'll explain how to do it, then you might conclude that it's easier to just Paypal your friends the few bucks and let 'em just buy the program...

The solution is something called ad hoc distribution and it's based on your phone's Unique Device Identification Data. Is it your phone's Serial Number, IMEI or ICCID? No, that'd be too easy. In fact, one of the easiest ways to ascertain your UDID is to actually grab the iPhone app UDID Helper and let it email you with your ID. Weird, eh?

Here's what it looks like:

iphone get udid ad hoc

Now, as the developer, you need to go into your code and make a few tweaks, including having a full list of the UDID of everyone you want to authorize (max limit = 100 UDIDs, btw). Here's a nice reference article: Beta testing on iPhone). If that doesn't work, iPhone Atlas has some good stuff too: info on Ad Hoc iPhone apps.

Finally, my colleague who is in the depths of iPhone app development added this note:

"There's a limit of 100 beta testers to whom we can send our app to. The challenge we've encountered, is assuring our beta testers that the UDID will not give us access to any of their personal data or files."
Now you can see where sending someone $1.99 via Paypal might be a far, far easier solution.


More Useful iPhone and Cell Phone Help Articles:
✔   How do you share an iPhone photo on Facebook?
All my friends have figured out the magic to take photos on their iPhone and upload them to Facebook. Everyone but me. How...
✔   Closed captioning for TV shows and movies on my iPhone?
Hey Dave, I saw your article from a few days about How to Turn on Closed Captioning in iTunes and am wondering if...
✔   How do I create location-based iPhone reminders?
Thanks to Siri, I've become a big fan of the Reminders app on my iPhone. Being able to say "remind me at 3pm...
✔   Enable Apple 2-Step Verification in iTunes?
I keep reading all these articles about iTunes account security and people having their accounts hacked. I have 2-step security verification set up...
✔   Turn an iTunes song into an iPhone ringtone?
I want to have song from my song list in iTunes into a ringtone I can use on my iPhone? Is it even...

Let's stay in touch!
Sign up for my weekly AskDaveTaylor Newsletter and you'll receive even more tech and gadget help right to your inbox, along with exclusive news and industry updates. It's good stuff. I promise!
    Enter your name: and your email addr:  









Reader Comments To Date:

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
Rather amazingly, there are no comments on this article yet.

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











I will never send you any unsolicited email. Ever.






Check This Out Too...

 
Look for Answers
Need Help? Ask Dave Taylor!


Follow Me on Pinterest

Find Me on Google+
ADT on G+
© 2002 - 2013 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site. Further, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site. My lawyer says "Thanks".
"Ask Dave Taylor®" is a registered trademark of Intuitive Systems, LLC.