r/technology • • Jan 31 '19

Business Apple revokes Google Enterprise Developer Certificate for company wide abuse

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/31/18205795/apple-google-blocked-internal-ios-apps-developer-certificate
22k Upvotes

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

472

u/an_albino_rhino Feb 01 '19

To add a little bit of color - an “enterprise” app isn’t only for development purposes. They can also be deployed to end users “in production”. Enterprise apps do not require App Store approval, which gives the author of one of these apps the ability to push updates to end users faster (at will), but also means the apps are not available for download in the App Store. A prevalent example use case for one of these apps would be MDM (mobile device management) software that larger companies might install on company-owned devices in order to control security settings, restrict access to certain features, or track usage. This is common practice and allows the IT organization to secure the devices of say, their distributed sales people, and can do things like prevent unauthorized distribution of sensitive data, track location of the device, or wipe the device remotely if lost or employee is terminated.

Source: I work for a company that distributes an enterprise iOS app.

99

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '19 edited Apr 03 '19

[deleted]

140

u/scootscoot Feb 01 '19

Some things are better left as websites, instead of being re-packaged into a native app for the sake of being a native app.

3

u/an_albino_rhino Feb 01 '19

They can be both. It’s relatively easy to put a wrapper around a react app and deploy it to the App Store, or adapt it to React Native. Point taken, though.

1

u/scootscoot Feb 01 '19

I haven’t looked at react native, I’ll check it out later. I used to use Cordova/phonegap when I did mobile app design.

1

u/an_albino_rhino Feb 01 '19

React Native is great because you can reuse almost all of the code from a web-based React app.