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Apple Acquires 'TestFlight' iOS Beta Testing Platform With Burstly Purchase

Friday February 21, 2014 9:31 am PST by Jordan Golson
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.

TestFlight
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.

[ 64 comments ]

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Gudi
74 months ago
Great. How much did they pay? More or less than $19bn. :)
Rating: 14 Votes
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AMDeeb
74 months ago
Where's the: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." ? :apple:
Rating: 12 Votes
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MarioG
74 months ago
Apple confirms acquisition of something what might actually be useful, nothing happens, the stock continues traditional friday selloff. Fb disgustingly overpays an app that no one sane ever needed and the whole WallStreet applauds. :confused::mad:
Rating: 6 Votes
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lincolntran
74 months ago

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?
Rating: 6 Votes
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greenl1ght
74 months ago
Oh god no... I hope this isn't true... TestFlight is the only thing that made deploying beta versions 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.
Rating: 6 Votes
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Rogifan
74 months ago

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. :)
Rating: 5 Votes
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starnox
74 months ago
Apple doesn't have a good track record of turning their purchases into useful products for quite a while. Shame I enjoyed test flight.
Rating: 5 Votes
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firewood
74 months ago


And an Enterprise account can't also sell software on the App Store. And you need a unique DUNS number for the Enterprise account. So we'd have to create a whole new company just to get a second DUNS number for the testing account. Apple's policies make NO sense.


A corporation can have both a standard iOS company developer account and an Enterprise account under the same DUNS number. Lots do.
Rating: 4 Votes
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greenl1ght
74 months ago

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?

Just to begin with, you can't test in-app purchases.

And an Enterprise account can't also sell software on the App Store. And you need a unique DUNS number for the Enterprise account. So we'd have to create a whole new company just to get a second DUNS number for the testing account. Apple's policies make NO sense.
Rating: 4 Votes
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Farthen
74 months ago
The thing I see many people missing from stating that they are happy that TestFlight was bought by Apple is: TestFlight actually worked.

Seriously, the workflow was totally easy and it even had this application that detected when you created an archive and asked you to upload it to TestFlight. There was only one gap in the whole process: Registering UUIDs in iTunes Connect. TestFlight even uploaded and symbolicated crash reports a thing which iTunes connect still totally fails with.

Apple can only mess this up. There is nothing they can do to make it better. There is a lot of potential to mess this up completely though. I might as well look for an alternative now *sigh*

I can see them discontinuing TestFlight service in two months, then having nothing for about a year and then announcing an inferior product as part of iTunes Connect.
Rating: 3 Votes

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