Thanks for the above again!
Quite so. The license enables (or disables) functionality in Runtime, but does not impact authentication. That's where the username/password or other type of credential comes in. That's what determines whether and how you can access a resource.
Makes sense in terms of the license key, thanks for explaining that.
Yes, it is. But if you're earning any revenue off the app (through App Store sales or ads, for example) then you need to make sure you have a paid Builder Plan for what we call a commercial deployment. If it's a free app, you can stick with the free Essentials Plan. See Deploy your app—ArcGIS Runtime SDK for iOS | ArcGIS for Developers for more info.
Thank you for that, this is for a client (The global disaster preparedness centre) to go in as a new feature to their First Aid app so it isn't for profit and never will be, that's good to know!
Back to authentication: If you're just authenticating to access the basemap services, you can use App Logins (Client ID + Client Secret). In fact, you should. I have also set the credential on the AGSPortal
And thanks yet again! Those links were really helpful, and that seems like a far more robust solution than setting the credential object all over the place, 100% didn't want to be using username/password and will definitely consider abstracting the client id and secret too!
Hope you have a nice weekend!