App Store, TestFlight Changes Mean Better Apps On The Horizon

Your iOS apps are about to get better. Changes made today by Apple are good news for Developers, as the size of apps that can be fronted to the App Store have doubled. Instead of 2GB apps, Developers can now submit 4GB apps for distribution, giving them a lot more room to perform in those rounded squares on your screen. Additionally, Apple has rolled out a change to TestFlight that could prove useful for Developers, especially if they have apps that need some dedicated attention.

With larger apps, Apple is allowing Developers to build out a more robust ecosystem within an app. Larger apps also means your experience may not be so fragmented (think Foursquare and Swarm). Rather than a series of standalone, simple apps, Developers can create a bubble for you to work in.

Those larger apps won't come without cost, though. We'll still only be able to download 100MB at a time, so larger apps may also mean longer downloads. For better apps, though, that's just fine with us.

TestFlight Groups will help Developers pay special attention to those new features in their bigger apps. With Groups, Developers can partition their beta testing crew into containers that will allow them to seed different builds to different groups, and create groups for specific purposes. If there were an app that had a lot of moving parts — say a presentation tool with a chat feature — Groups just might let a Developer create focus groups for either section of the app.

Good news for Developers often means great news for users, and while none of this will show results immediately, it will make for a better iOS experience for everyone soon enough.

Source: Apple Developers