Learning iPad Programming: Provisioning Your iPad
- About the iOS Provisioning Portal
- The Provisioning Process: A Brief Overview
- Setting Up Your Development Machine
- Setting Up Your Device
- Using the iOS Provisioning Portal
- Summary
Before you ship the next killer app, you must test it on an iPad. Using the iPad Simulator to test and debug your application will only get you so far. That’s why it’s important to always test your app on the real thing. But before your app will run on a real device, you must set up your iPad as a development device. This is where provisioning comes in, and that’s exactly what you will do in this chapter: provision your iPad for development purposes.
The steps involved are tedious. Fortunately you do not have to repeat them often, only a few times a year. And Apple is continuously improving the provisioning process. Provisioning a device today using Xcode is easy-peasy compared to what one had to do back in the day ... the dark days of 2008.
About the iOS Provisioning Portal
The iOS Provisioning Portal is the Web site, shown in Figure 6.1, used to request and download certificates, register device IDs, create App IDs, and create and download provisioning profiles. The Web site and all of its features are not available to everyone. You have access to the portal if you are one of the following:
- An individual registered as a paid member of the iOS Developer Program. You can be registered as an individual or a company.
- An individual registered as a team member for a company that is a paid member of the iOS Developer Program. Depending on your team member role, your access to the Provisioning Portal may be limited. There is no cost to the individual team member, and team members have access to all of the same developer resources that a paid member has, courtesy of the paid company membership.
Figure 6.1. iOS Provisioning Portal home page
If you are not a paid member or a team member of a company, you will not have access to the iOS Provisioning Portal. Without access, you will not be able to provision your device.