Ad Hoc Distribution to a windows machine?

You just drag the folder onto iTunes, and it will recognize it as an app bundle and attempt to create an ipa (which is just a zip file under a different name).

However, the 'Ad Hoc distribution doesn't work' thread errors come up for me on Windows, as well. So... 😟

The order shouldn't matter as long as both are there when you sync to the device.

But from all accounts, and my experience, ad hoc doesn't actually work yet. But if it ever does, it doesn't appear that the order will matter.

I managed to build an iPhone distribution app and sent it to a few beta testers. Those with Mac machines managed to install it just fine.

Everyone with a windows machine encountered the same problem. When dragging the app folder into iTunes application tab, nothing happens. The mobileprovision installs fine, but dragging the app folder doesn't do anything. No processing happens and no app shows up.

Has anyone encountered this problem where the ad-hoc distribution app works fine on OSX but not on Windows? Did I miss an important step that affects only windows?

Thanks.

Dragging the app to iTunes is not as forgiving on Windows as it is on Mac. Have the user select Applications on the left side and then drag the app file to the right side. That's worked for me.

Here's what I do from the command line:
cp myicon.512x512.jpg iTunesArtwork
mkdir Payload
cp -rp myapp.app Payload/
zip -r myapp.zip iTunesArtwork Payload
mv myapp.zip myapp.ipa

Then I email the .ipa file and provision file to windows users.

Another possibility is to drop your .app bundle onto iTunes on a Mac. Then find the .ipa that iTunes creates in its Mobile Applications directory, and email that.

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I spent countless hours with this until I tried the suggestion in the last post.

"Another possibility is to drop your .app bundle onto iTunes on a Mac. Then find the .ipa that iTunes creates in its Mobile Applications directory, and email that."

That did it!

Thanks

Help! I've tried all the steps in this thread and am still unable to distribute to a phone using iTunes on Windows.

In summary, I've created and built an app on my Mac Mini and deployed it to my phone using an ad-hoc provision generated by the developer portal. Taking the same app-bundle and mobile provisioning file to a windows computer and attempting to deploy it to another phone, produces this error:

"Could not be installed because it could not be verified"

I'm trying to figure out why this is failing, surely one of the many steps I've taken is not quite right.

Here are the details:

I created device ids for two phones we’d like to test.
I am using iTunes on a mac.
Then, using the developer portal, I created an ad-hoc provisioning profile for an appID I created earlier.
Then, using XCode, I configured the signing of my app to use the provisioning profile just created.
Then, using iTunes on my mac, I dragged the app bundle and provisioning profile to the applications panel.
Then I clicked sync – it succeeded and the app works on my phone.

Looking in the settings on my phone, I see a profile for the ad-hoc provision.

I emailed the app and the provisioning profile to my brother to install on the other phone.
Using iTunes on windows, he dagged the app (directory) and provisioning profile to the applications panel.
He clicked sync – it failed – "Could not be installed because it could not be verified"

Looking in the settings on my brother’s phone, we see no profile for the ad-hoc provision.

"Another possibility is to drop your .app bundle onto iTunes on a Mac. Then find the .ipa that iTunes creates in its Mobile Applications directory, and email that."


This worked getting it on a buddies iPhone attached to a Windows box. Thanks very much.

Hey Jason,

Did you get this to work? My ad-hoc distribution was working a month or so ago, now I get the same message as you on non development iphones and machines (mac and windows) that havn't been used fro distribution before.

This is one of the real nasty gotchas in the iPhone dev process. The zip that the Mac uses, the iTunes installer on a PC doesn't like. And VV. I wonder if iTunes is getting confused as to where the certificate is located in the file when going across machines. So it cannot find the cert in a file zipped on the other guys box and gives that nitwit "Unable to verify..." error.

So you need to build two zip files for your testers. One on the Mac for the Mac guys, and another built on Windows for the PC gang. Using iTunes on a PC to create the .ipa is effectively doing the same thing since I assume it uses the same windows compression libraries.

How do you create the file from the PC? Do you need to sync your apps to the phone from the PC?

Hi,

did you find out what was the problem?
I am currently having the same trouble you had, billyork67 😟

Developping on Mac OS 1.5.7,
Tested AdHoc distribution on my iPhone (working), then on a friend iPhone (registered in my devices list), with a correct provision file, and iTunes said it couldn't verify the application.

I don't know what to do!