After being announced late last year, Apple is now officially waiving the developer program fees for eligible organizations including government entities and non-profits.
Apple developer program now available at no cost to eligible organizations
Dev Center
Check out redesigned account pages on Apple’s Developer Center portal
Apple's Developer Center portal has received a facelift last evening with reports of much revamped account pages. The redesigned account section on Dev Center has at last adopted a more user friendly two-column layout, with links to the most important account-related sections now conveniently provided in the lefthand column.
The navigation column is divided in two sections: Program Resources and Additional Resources. In your Program Resources, you'll find such sections as Overview, Membership, iTunes Connect, CloudKit Dashboard, Code-Level Support and Certificates, IDs & Profiles.
Apple fixes remote execution code flaw that brought Dev Center down
While independent security researcher Ibrahim Balic claimed responsibility for taking down Apple's Dev Center, in reality his discovery of an iAd Workbench vulnerability had nothing to do with the Dev Center outage.
Apple this morning credited Balic for reporting the iAd Workbench bug that did allow him to obtain full names and Apple IDs of Apple's registered iOS and Mac developers.
While it's a bit murky whether or not Balic was solely responsible for the system-wide Dev Center shutdown, Apple today wrote on its Web Server notifications page that it fixed a "remote code execution issue" that allegedly caused the downtime...
Apple credits Ibrahim Balic for reporting iAd Workbench vulnerability
Ibrahim Balic, an independent security researcher, made the headlines by taking credit for knocking Apple's Dev Center out for thirteen days following his discovery of a serious iAd Workbench vulnerability.
Even though that issue hasn't made the hack directly possible, it did force Apple to shut down Dev Center for more than a week.
It has also prompted an overhaul of Apple's developer systems, including updating the server software and rebuilding the entire database. Though Balic has rarely come out of stealth mode since protecting his Twitter timeline out of fear of potential consequences, he needn't worry as Apple has now credited him with reporting the iAd Workbench vulnerability...
Apple’s Dev Center to undergo scheduled downtime tonight
Apple began emailing developers last night, informing them that their Developer Website would be going offline on August 17th—that's tonight—at 6PM PST for a "brief scheduled maintenance."
The move comes exactly one week after Apple alerted developers that all of its remaining Dev Center services had been brought back online following a three week outage due to a security breach...
All Dev Center services now back online, memberships extended one month for outage
Apple sent out an email to developers tonight, informing them that all Developer Program Services are now back online. The news puts an end to a three week outage, which began mid-July following a security breach on Apple's Developer website.
Since the breach, Apple has promised to overhaul its developer systems and rebuild its database in order to prevent something like this from happening again. And over the last few weeks, it has slowly been bringing its various services back online...
Apple issues another system status update to developers
Although the majority of its services are back online and in working condition, Apple has been diligent about keeping developers updated on the progress of its efforts after suffering a security threat a few weeks back.
Key services like the iOS and Mac dev centers are back online, but there are still a few items that remain stuck in limbo, namely, Xcode automatic configuration, TSIs, program enrollments, and renewals in Member Center.
Apple says that it expects that the majority of the remaining services should be back online this week. Have a look inside for the full e-mail that was issued to developers today.
Apple warns devs of app review delays following Dev Center outage
Apple is emailing its registered iOS developers that app approvals may take longer than usual, most likely due to an eight-day-long Dev Center outage having created a backlog of submissions for App Store approval. A few developers reported receiving an email from Apple apologizing for the delay due to the review process requiring "additional time".
Apple started bringing the various Dev Center systems back online six days ago, following an attempted breach which prompted the server-wide security shutdown, in turn stripping developers of access to pre-release documentation, beta code and other development tools...
Dev Center is back!
Apple's Dev Center has been knocked down for more than a week following an attempted breach last Thursday that exploited an iAd Workbench vulnerability, warrantying an emergency shutdown.
Seven top priority sub-systems have gone back up this afternoon (scammers won't like this), with eight more to follow suit soon.
I'd checked the portal out briefly prior to publication and nothing seemed out of ordinary. Most major sub-systems seem to be working now, with current iOS and OS X betas available for downloaded as if nothing had happened.
New betas of iOS 7, Xcode 5 and OS X Mavericks should become available after Apple brings the remaining systems online. It was just yesterday that Apple updated us on the outage and posted a brand new Dev Center System Status page...
Warning: new phishing scam exploits Dev Center outage
As most of you know, Apple's Developer Center has been offline for going on 7 days now. The company posted an update to the situation yesterday, outlining when services will be available, but it's still not clear when the portal will be fully functional again.
The breadth of the outage is far-reaching—Apple has hundreds of thousands of app developers worldwide. So it's no surprise that some not-so-nice people have decided to exploit the situation by sending out malicious emails, pretending to be the company...
Joy of Tech jokes about Dev Center outage
It's been more than a week now since a security researcher tapped an iAd Workbench vulnerability, prompting an unprecedented shutdown of Dev Center, but Apple is still struggling to bring all of the fifteen different services back up (only Bug Reporter and iTunes Connect were live at post time).
The outage isn't alarming (yet) - at least compared to the PSN breach - and Apple assured no credit card data or iTunes accounts was compromised.
But tell that to frustrated Apple developers who are unable to access their documentation, beta code and development tools. You can tell the unnerving situation is getting out of hand when satirists start joking about it...
Amid continuing outage, Apple launches Dev Center status dashboard
Seven days into the Dev Center outage and there's no end in sight to this major blunder. Developers use Apple's Dev Center to access technical documentation, download iOS 7 and OS X beta builds, file bug reports, give feedback, use web tools to manage their code and much more.
Therefore, this downtime is entirely unacceptable and it's become totally conceivable now that such a significant downtime might spoil Apple's blockbuster Fall. Realizing as much, the firm on Wednesday posted a notice outlining its steps going forward.
And, a brand new dashboard status page charts Apple's recovery from the hack...