Understandable, but there is a deeper problem of course - the app store model is broken for apps that need hotfix capabilities (aka enterprise).
We've been meeting with Apple on this topic for years and continue to sideload our app as we need to meet SLAs with our customers. They sign the binaries with their dev certificates, which violates Apple's guidelines too.
But, alas, once you have critical mass in a vertical even mighty Apple gets cold feet about shutting your customers down.
Why Apple is not able to offer a separate way for certified and audited dev shops to hotfix their iOS apps is beyond me. SAP, MS, IBM - a shitload of big shops would love to pay for this privilege.
Right now we get the certificates from out customers, sign the individual binaries. Then distribute through our own infrastructure.
We have our own update mechanism (basically hot code push), cannot have the customer's own IT shop be a barrier to deploy the fix. User sync their apps, if there is an upgrade that gets done inbetween the normal data/content sync.
We've been meeting with Apple on this topic for years and continue to sideload our app as we need to meet SLAs with our customers. They sign the binaries with their dev certificates, which violates Apple's guidelines too.
But, alas, once you have critical mass in a vertical even mighty Apple gets cold feet about shutting your customers down.
Why Apple is not able to offer a separate way for certified and audited dev shops to hotfix their iOS apps is beyond me. SAP, MS, IBM - a shitload of big shops would love to pay for this privilege.