I know you will all think I’m indulging my inner Apple Fan Boyzism but I want to say a few words in praise of an Apple app. As you likely know by now, I am involved in a beta test of Journelly. You can read about my experience with that app here and here.
But now I want to write about my experience with Apple’s support of app betas. As you probably know, Apple has its App store locked down pretty tightly. All apps have to be vetted before they can appear in the store. That raises the question of what to do about betas.
Apple has a great solution. They have an app called TestFlight to make all this seamless. The prospective beta tester gets an invite from the developer, installs TestFlight, and then simply clicks on the invite. TestFlight takes care of the rest. It installs the app beta, shows you the developers notes, and allows you to open the app. After that, you can use it until that version of the app beta expires—usually 90 days.
When the developer releases a new version of the beta, TestFlight notifies you and can optionally install it automatically. In either event, you are shown the current release notes. It’s hard to imagine a more seamless procedure. Basically, TestFlight takes care of everything from the tester’s point of view. I don’t know what it looks like from the developer’s point of view but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t similarly easy.