Apple has purchased Burstly, the company behind the popular iOS beta testing platform TestFlight, according to TechCrunch. The site says its sources have "pointed in Apple's direction" and that though it's just a rumor at this point, it would make a good fit.
TestFlight said on Wednesday that it would be discontinuing its Android product and it will no longer take new customers for its beta testing SDK -- existing customers can continue using TestFlight, however.
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Odder still is how these product announcements – which greatly impact the company’s mobile developer user base – have been handled so far. There’s been no mention of them on the TestFlight changelog, for example, no company blog post, no emails, and no mention of them on social media channels – that is, unless you count the replies to confused developers from @testflightapp, the company’s main Twitter account. Developers are being asked to reach out directly to the company via an email form instead of being given a more useful public reply.
There are a number of different beta testing iOS platforms, including TestFlight and HockeyApp, though a number of larger developers have created their own testing platforms through Apple's Enterprise distribution program.
Update: Apple confirmed the purchase to Re/code, but did not disclose pricing.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Oh god no... TestFlight is the only thing that made deploying beta test of iOS apps bearable. Now I expect them to ruin it by adding pointless restrictions.
My company is suffering REALLY BAD from the 110 devices/developer restriction for developer accounts (try testing In-App purchases, iCloud, Keychain, push notifications etc for a top-50 app with any of the workarounds people usually propose). If TestFlight added the same restriction, it would make our lives even worse.
I love Objective-C and the Cocoa Touch APIs, but Apple's dev tools (does anyone use the built-in git support in Xcode?) and dev infrastructure (provisioning.profiles.need.to.die.) are really developer-hostile. Their restrictions are strangling us.
A company should use enterprise account to distribute beta apps. It has unlimited amount of device, no restriction at all. Was there any specific reason your company don't use it?
My company is suffering REALLY BAD from the 110 devices/developer restriction for developer accounts (try testing In-App purchases, iCloud, Keychain, push notifications etc for a top-50 app with any of the workarounds people usually propose). If TestFlight added the same restriction, it would make our lives even worse.
I love Objective-C and the Cocoa Touch APIs, but Apple's dev tools (does anyone use the built-in git support in Xcode?) and dev infrastructure (provisioning.profiles.need.to.die.) are really developer-hostile. Their restrictions are strangling us.
Apple doesn't have a good track record of turning their purchases into useful products for quite a while. Shame I enjoyed test flight.
Touch ID says Hi. :)