It’s taking how long?

by George on May.15, 2009, under Setting up

As we’ve been setting up this company, a lot of thought has gone into how and when we need to do things so that we can maximise the (spare) time we have to devote to it. We wanted to enrol in the developer program as a company, rather than as individuals, so we set up the company first. Then came the part we were a bit worried about. Searching the web, you find plenty of stories of one or two month waiting times to become enrolled on the program.

Here’s how it went down for us:

Create company on the 9th of May.
Submit for application for developer program on the 10th.
Email from Apple asking for our Certificate of Incorporation on the 12th.
Finally get a chance to fax off the Certificate on the morning of the 14th.
Get a phone call / email from Apple about noon.
Purchase license about 5 minutes later.
Prepare to wait ‘up to 48 hours’ for activation code.
It turns up 4 hours later.
Go to the Apple’s iPhone Dev Center and remember to log out and log back in again to see the update.
Done, we have the keys to the Magic Kingdom.

That’s right, the bulk of the process happened in a single day. Start to finish was only five days, two of which were a weekend, and one of which was lost due to my inability to get close enough to a fax machine. Thank you Apple, you’ve made my week, possibly my month.

Now admitedly we haven’t sorted out all the financial details yet, but we don’t have an application to sell yet either, so I’m not too worried. What we do have is the ability to deploy applications to an iPhone or iPod Touch now, and the first time you do that is a little magical

Sam and I also had a design session last night where we started seriously planning our first two applications. More on that later.

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Becoming a liability (but just a limited one)

:Apple, Approval, Developer Program, iPhone

4 Comments for this entry

Graham
May 18th, 2009 on 1:35 am
Young adventurers shall heed the advice of the ancient texts,

While sponges and reboots are high on the mystic spectrometer, the fresh travellers be wary;
Psychic tendencies are telling of grave danger, the codex instruct you should avoid any Trace of whales, clocktowers, streets, medics, kids, monkeys or fun. The wolf howl alas doth caution for when salons, recycling or physics are turned, the pair must make haste in their conviction.

Tis an exuberant yet dangerous time when the half moon unmasks it’s dark side.

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George
May 18th, 2009 on 9:02 am
Hi Graham – nice of you to drop by. All warnings duly noted. It is indeed a time that the Chinese would warn against as being ‘interesting’. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times)

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Jeff
May 18th, 2009 on 2:31 pm
Hey Guys. I signed up for a individual account, and it was done within 24 hours, but I had also heard horror stories for businesses getting set up. Glad to hear that the activation was quick and easy.

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George
May 18th, 2009 on 3:52 pm
Hi Jeff – I’m thinking that maybe Apple has got this aspect of their organisation running smoothly now, or perhaps demand has dropped off since earlier in the year. Either way, it’s nice to have it all sorted.

Still have to set up the banking / tax side of things which should be fun

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