Twixl Publisher

What kind of publishing options are available for tablet apps?

Ad Hoc Publishing

“Ad hoc” publishing is only available on iPad and is meant for testing. It allows you to distribute your application outside of the App Store on a maximum of 100 devices. The “Ad Hoc” procedure requires that the unique serial numbers (UDIDs) of the iPads you want to use for testing are registered in Apple’s iOS Provisioning Portal. Only the registered iPads will be able to install these “Ad Hoc” apps.
Distribution of such an app is usually done through synching an iPad with iTunes running on a desktop.
“Ad Hoc” publishing is used for testing purposes, but also for small scale deployment of internal applications. The advantage is you can publish whatever you want and you don’t have to go through the App Store approval process. The disadvantage is the requirement that each iPad needs to be registered, which is a time-consuming activity, and that the maximum number of devices within a company is 100 (iPhones within a company also count). Note that each "Ad-Hoc" app will expire once your provisioning profile expires. So this publishing option is only legitimate on the short term. The free Twixl Publisher Explore allows you to create your own “Ad Hoc” builds.

App Store Publishing

Publishing via the app stores is the most popular way to distribute your applications. You can either publish free or paid apps. Free apps can be distributed without having to pay any extra fees to the app stores (i.e. apart from their different Developer Programs). For paid apps, they'll get about 30% of the revenue.
With Twixl Publisher you develop your app in InDesign, then create an app store build with Twixl Publisher Builder, then submit your app to the app stores through their portal. You can do this completely independently. After a period of time (from one day to a couple of weeks), you’ll get a notification from them whether your app is approved or not, and if it is, it will become available for download in their app stores. With our Bronze, Gold and Platinum editions you are able to create as many app store apps as you would like to for a onetime licence fee.

Enterprise Publishing

Enterprise publishing is different for iPad and for Android. For Android you are free to publish wherever you want to whom you want. In fact there is no difference between a public app and an enterprise app. For iPad the case is completely different. Enterprise publishing is similar to “Ad Hoc” publishing, but it’s a lot easier to use for deployment because of two reasons:
1° there is no device limit (“Ad Hoc” apps have a 100-device limit).
2° you are not required to register the unique IDs (UDIDs) of all your iPads.
For Enterprise publishing you need to apply for the iOS Developer Enterprise Program. Once your application for that program has been approved, you are allowed to publish an unlimited number of in-house applications (i.e. within your own company and its affiliated parties — to be clear, you are not allowed to publish this type of app to the public).
This type of publishing is used by large companies, schools, universities, government departments, … to provide their employees with different types of publications. e.g. sales reps with data sheets and product presentations and technicians with technical manuals
With Twixl Publisher Platinum edition you can create an unlimited number of single- and multi-issue enterprise apps.
With our Twixl Enterprise Kiosk you can make these publications available on your own server, within your own kiosk to present all your apps, and host the content internally. You are in control. The only cost you have is your software licence. There is no monthly cost and no cost per download.
Our Enterprise Kiosk solution is the only fully independent publishing solution on the market.

By making a difference between Public and Enterprise publishing and by working with a specific Enterprise development program Apple has created a far more secure environment for publishing which is one of the reasons why iPads have more than 75% market share within the Enterprise market and why many enterprises only allow publishing on iPads.