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As you're developing or customizing uMobile, you'll want to test regularly to make sure your app is functioning as expected. The processes and requirements for testing on iOS and Android are very different.

Testing iOS (iPhone and iPad)

As mentioned before, you can only develop and test iOS applications on Mac OSX 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard) or greater. Here are the additional requirements for testing and releasing iOS apps (including testing on a device).

  • An iOS Developer Program Account ($99/year)
  • XCode with iOS SDK: http://developer.apple.com/xcode/
  • A Development Certificate to sign applications for testing on devices
  • A Development Provisioning Profile to install on devices for testing
  • A Distribution Certificate to sign applications for distribution in the App Store
  • A Distribution Provisioning Profile for submission/distribution through App Store

Setting up iOS Developer Program Account

Visit http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/ and click "enroll now". During the process, you can select if you'd like to enroll as a company or as an individual. Enrolling as a company will generally make more sense as it allows multiple users to be associated with one account, but it will likely take a few days for Apple to verify information about the company and approve the account. If you enroll as a company, you won't be required to pay the $99 fee until your account has been approved. Individuals should be prepared to pay the fee at the end of the signup process.

Once your account is created, you'll have access to two important tools for iOS development and deployment: iOS Provisioning Portal and iTunes Connect.

Setting up XCode and iOS SDK

Although most of the development time for uMobile takes place in your own code editor and Titanium Developer, you'll need the iOS SDK to compile apps and will need XCode occasionally to manage other data. You'll need to be enrolled in the iOS developer program (or Mac OSX Developer Program) before you can download XCode. Visit https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ to download the IDE bundled with the iOS SDK. The download is about 4.6 Gigs, so be prepared to wait a while. Once XCode finishes downloading, install it, and you now have the iOS SDK ready to go.

Creating iOS Certificates and Provisioning Profiles

This topic is covered in good detail here: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Xcode/Conceptual/iphone_development/128-Managing_Devices_and_Digital_Identities/devices_and_identities.html

The creation and management of certificates and provisioning profiles can be confusing, but is a necessary part of the process to be able to test on real devices and ultimately submit your app to the App Store. A simple way to think about certificates and profiles is that a certificate pertains to the integrity of one or many applications, whereas a profile pertains to the deployment context of one or many applications. Here are some examples of profiles:

  • Jeff Cross Development Certificate - Personal certificate for signing apps to test.
  • Unicon, Inc. Distribution Certificate - iOS Account-wide certificate for signing apps for distribution
  • Team Provisioning Profile - 
  • Jeff Cross iPad Profile
  • Sakai11 Distribution Profile

Each developer under an account will be required to generate their own development certificate in order to be able to sign applications for installation on a test device.

  1. Start off by visiting http://developer.apple.com/ios/manage/overview/index.action
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