It appears that in order to code sign my apps I’ll need to shell out $99 for the Apple Developer program. Fine, whatever. My question is whether I should sign up using my existing Apple ID (my personal account) or create a new Apple ID specifically for my business. The work is technically done under an LLC.
Is there an advantage or disadvantage to one over the other?
I’m not a lawyer, but I would do anything business related as the LLC including the MAS/code signing stuff, you’re keeping personal and the business all separate. Don’t want any lawyers “Piercing the corporate veil”, at least not that easily. Just my 2c.
I’ve just formed my LLC and will be creating a new ADC account shortly.
It basically depends on how you want to sell your apps. With a personal license it will show your name as the developer, with a company license it shows your company name (after Apple have verified your company is a legal company). Here in Taiwan we had to change the nature of our company to fit Apple’s requirements.
If you’d loose the LLC for some reason, you don’t want to also loose your private stuff like iTunes purchases.
So better separate and keep different IDs for different things.
Is that fairly new request? I used to have an “S” chapter corporation as an ADC account and I just had to fax proof that I was formed and registered in the Commonwealth of Virginia. That is gone and now I’ve just formed an LLC.
Actually, googling away, yes it is. Also, looks like D&B will try and upsell you all the way! Nice. However you can get it for free and takes up to 30 days. ! Hey ho.
Apple sent an email to developers a couple of weeks ago saying that apps can be transferred from one ID to another for when we all get bought out by Zynga for $100m.
Yup they’re a pain to deal with, but it only takes them a day to generate the number. We had to set-up the request with the Taiwanese arm (as we’re based in Taiwan), a week later we called back to be told that the number had been generated, but it hadn’t been sent to Taiwan yet. Urm… okay, how about e-mail? So my wife (who organized it), called the U.S. office and finally spoke to a helpful guy who said, yes the number was created the day after the request and read it out to us over the phone.
Make sure you have a different email address for business and personal. I ran into a mess having two accounts both pointed to the same email address. They have yet to get it fully straightened out.