Apple closing independent TestFlight service at the end of February
Developers still using the old, independent TestFlight service for beta testing iOS apps now have one month to migrate to the new iTunes Connect-based offering, as the company announced on Monday that it would shutter TestFlightApp.com on Feb. 26.
The change comes almost exactly one year after Apple acquired TestFlight's parent company Burstly, and just over three months after the launch of an all-new TestFlight service integrated into iTunes Connect. The change was announced in a Monday email to TestFlight customers which was first noted by TheNextWeb.
According to the official migration FAQ, developers will not be able to directly transfer apps or beta testers from TestFlightApp.com to the new version. They will first need to configure the apps in iTunes Connect, then export testers' contact information from TestFlightApp.com before importing it to iTunes Connect.
Apple purchased Burstly in February of last year, with financial terms still unknown. At the time, some speculated that it may simply be a so-called "acqui-hire," but that was quickly quashed when TestFlight was spotted in iOS 8 betas.
Burstly's other offering, ad monetization service SkyRocket, was shuttered last summer.
The change comes almost exactly one year after Apple acquired TestFlight's parent company Burstly, and just over three months after the launch of an all-new TestFlight service integrated into iTunes Connect. The change was announced in a Monday email to TestFlight customers which was first noted by TheNextWeb.
According to the official migration FAQ, developers will not be able to directly transfer apps or beta testers from TestFlightApp.com to the new version. They will first need to configure the apps in iTunes Connect, then export testers' contact information from TestFlightApp.com before importing it to iTunes Connect.
Apple purchased Burstly in February of last year, with financial terms still unknown. At the time, some speculated that it may simply be a so-called "acqui-hire," but that was quickly quashed when TestFlight was spotted in iOS 8 betas.
Burstly's other offering, ad monetization service SkyRocket, was shuttered last summer.
Comments
We don't get crash dumps from iTunes Connect Test Flight either, which is a big downer.
All around a loss for the Apple development community.
That's funny, most developers love having TestFlight integrated. Not sure your opinion holds.
That's funny, most developers love having TestFlight integrated. Not sure your opinion holds.
There are lot of advantages to the integrated one, and I am not saying the integration is not good. I am saying that the closing of the older one is a loss for the development community because you lose good capability. For one, I have seen no place where you get crash dumps in the new integrated one (at least with external testers -- we don't currently use it for internal testers as the overhead to set it up is too high). That is a LOSS. (You do get them for released apps, in some form or another, but not for unreleased apps in external test, or at least didn't, with no mention of it at all in the iTunes Connect support pages, when I last looked a week ago).
Two, you have to create an iTunes Connect app entry for every app, which is high overhead compared to the going-away version, where it was extremely low overhead. We have versions of our app that will never be released on iTunes, for which we have different appIDs, so that we can have multiple versions of the app on our devices at once, with customized settings, like which test database the app runs against, etc. The overhead to do this in iTunes Connect is much higher. Much more friction.
The new integrated one makes the external testing easier to set up, which is good. We currently use both forms of Test Flight since both have advantages.
Again, I am not complaining about the new integrated one, and I really doubt I am the only person lamenting the loss of the old Test Flight.
Doesn't this make testing older devices and firmware versions impossible? I can see apps having issues with iOS 7 and earlier when developers can't even test with them during the beta cycle because TestFlight won't support it.
I've also heard that Apple has to approve the beta that goes out to the testers, which adds to the testing time. I can't imagine developers are happy with this at all.
There are lot of advantages to the integrated one, and I am not saying the integration is not good. I am saying that the closing of the older one is a loss for the development community because you lose good capability. For one, I have seen no place where you get crash dumps in the new integrated one (at least with external testers -- we don't currently use it for internal testers as the overhead to set it up is too high). That is a LOSS. (You do get them for released apps, in some form or another, but not for unreleased apps in external test, or at least didn't, with no mention of it at all in the iTunes Connect support pages, when I last looked a week ago).
Two, you have to create an iTunes Connect app entry for every app, which is high overhead compared to the going-away version, where it was extremely low overhead. We have versions of our app that will never be released on iTunes, for which we have different appIDs, so that we can have multiple versions of the app on our devices at once, with customized settings, like which test database the app runs against, etc. The overhead to do this in iTunes Connect is much higher. Much more friction.
The new integrated one makes the external testing easier to set up, which is good. We currently use both forms of Test Flight since both have advantages.
Again, I am not complaining about the new integrated one, and I really doubt I am the only person lamenting the loss of the old Test Flight.
Okay, that works then. Thanks for the response.
Doesn't this make testing older devices and firmware versions impossible? I can see apps having issues with iOS 7 and earlier when developers can't even test with them during the beta cycle because TestFlight won't support it.
I've also heard that Apple has to approve the beta that goes out to the testers, which adds to the testing time. I can't imagine developers are happy with this at all.
Yes, it makes testing on older iOS versions harder. The app I am helping with now supports iOS7 and above, but we can only test using the iTunes Connect integrated TestFlight with iOS 8 and higher.
The approval by Apple is not that big of a deal, in my experience. The first version approval is about a day, which sucks, but as long as you don't make major changes to it, later approvals happen basically immediately, in my experience. The system asks if you have made any major changes (my words, I forget the Apple words) and if you haven't and answer such, it seems to auto approve, so no real delay. This is with external testers. We have not tried it yet with internal testing as the current non-Apple Test Flight works better for us, for now, for internal testing.
Quote:
That's funny, most developers love having TestFlight integrated. Not sure your opinion holds.
Oh it holds all right. We switched to HockeyApp because the new service from Apple is inferior to what is being shut down.
Ah, funny. We are abandoning HockeyApp to migrate to this since the headache of handling device IDs is so high with HockeyApp and TestFlight handles all of that automatically.
Ah, funny. We are abandoning HockeyApp to migrate to this since the headache of handling device IDs is so high with HockeyApp and TestFlight handles all of that automatically.
I'm guessing it has a lot to do with team size. We have a small handful of testers, and the stack trace functionality outweighs the pain of dealing with UUIDs.
We use the new Apple Test Flight and the old Test Flight. Both have their places. Dealing with external test groups that can get "large" (which means for us, multiple 10s of users) the new Apple one is nice.
But for our internal testers, we lose so much, it hurts and will make my life a lot more miserable, at least in the short term.
Same reasons as the other poster- builds that connect to test systems, that will never be released to the wider world. Crash logs are a definite bonus.
Nice
You're not. The old version is still really great so it will be a sad loss.
I've used it a lot in Enterprise but the new integrated one cannot be used for enterprise.
Not everyone wants to use an MDM thtoughout development and testing.
Often it's best to leave MDM until the app is a formal release, especially in larger organisations where the MDM is handled by a different department to the dev team.
The new iTunes version of TestFlight is only for apps going in the public app store.
I think many people will switch to the HockeyApp service though.