iPhone provisioning

We want to set up another QA device as the only actual device I have tested our app on is an iTouch. A QA staff member has an iPhone and is willing to have me install the application on his phone. This should be easy but it is not. In fact it still is not working.

First I had to have my boss log in to our iOS developer account and provision the identifier off his phone. Easy enough. Then I fire up Xcode 4 and click all over the place in organizer and finally get it to recognize the phone then it does some rather long communications with it before it settles down. I then attempt to build and put the app on the phone. No dice. It does not like something about the phone and keys and profiles. I fiddle around with it for a bit and look up what I can on Google. Still don't have it working but I needed to be done so he could get back to work.

I will do some more looking around on Google to see what I can find. Sounds like this is a very common problem and people just clean / build / clean / clear / clean / build until it finally works. No one so far has had a nice solid solution.

It took us a month to get anything working with our iOS account as it was. Apple had to cancel the whole thing and recreate it at one point. This has been nothing but a huge PITA. I am very underwhelmed with the whole iOS developer experience as far as hardware goes. They generally treat you like a crook and you just feel lucky if you can get any of it too work and once you do you don't know how you got it to work and you just hope you never have to touch it again.

I need to provision a few more devices so I hope I can get this one working and I can learn enough to apply the knowledge to the next set. This is really just stupid and you should not fight your developers tooth and nail and every turn. Let me put my code on whatever device I choose!

Really a total opposite to my Android experience. A support person got a new phone last night and asked for the latest build to be put on it. I walked it over to my desk, plugged in my USB cable, did a Run in Eclipse, selected her phone from the list of devices and it was installed. Less than 1 minute passed and I turned it back over to her. I have installed it on 5 different phones in the office doing the same procedure. With one I had to install some USB drivers first adding a few minutes to my time. Otherwise it has been dead simple. My app being installed on any phone I like. Simple.