How to determine at run-time if app is for development, app store or ad hoc distribution?

The easiest way to check is to look at embedded.mobileprovision ([[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"embedded.mobileprovision" ofType:nil]):

• It’s a bit of a pain to parse since it’s a signed plist (PKCS#7 signed data, according to openssl asn1parse -inform der), but a bad hack is to just look for <plist and </plist>.
• Development contains UDIDs and <key>get-task-allow</key><true/>
• Ad Hoc distribution contains UDIDs (and get-task-allow=false)
• App Store distribution contains no UDIDs.

The other thing you can check is the entitlements embedded in the executable (otool -l lists it as LC_CODE_SIGNATURE). Parsing this is even more tedious (you need to parse the Mach-O header and load commands, and for “universal” binaries which are now the default, you’ll need to check the currently-loaded architecture or all architectures).

• Development builds contain <key>get-task-allow</key><true/>
• Ad Hoc and App Store builds contain <key>get-task-allow</key><false/>

I don’t think the entitlements distinguish between Ad Hoc and App Store builds.

Apart from those and the certificate it’s signed with, there’s no difference between Development/Ad Hoc/App Store apps (there are a few other things in the entitlements/provisioning profile, but nothing more reliable that I can think of).

Security considerations

Neither of these are that difficult to circumvent. For the first method, the app could just “swizzle” -[NSBundle pathForResource:ofType:]. The second method is a bit more difficult depending on what API you use to read the file.