Provisioning profile and developer certificate

At what stage of a iPhone app development do we need provisioning profile and developer certificate? What are their importance and from where we get them? And how do we distribute our iPhone app for testing by other users and finally to end customers in App Store, using provisioning profile or developer certificate or something else.开发者_如何学JAVA Please throw some light on this matter!!!

You can develop apps for the iOS Simulator for free. If you are not yet testing your apps on actual devices, and are not submitting apps to the App store, then you don't need developer certificates.

When you get to the point you are doing either of the above, then you will need certificates and provisions, and can read about how to use them here in the Development Guide and here in the Store Resource page on Apple's developer site.

You will need to read and follow the instructions in these documents very carefully. Don't depend on any quick answer or assumptions.

A developer account will allow you to not only test on your device, but also to generate provisioning profiles for "ad hoc" provisioning, which allows you to share apps with up to 100 devices a year (your beta testers/clients/etc.).

You can't submit an app to the App Store before you have a developer account; and you shouldn't submit an app before having tested it on at least one device.