Apple Unleashes TestFlight Beta For Devs, Gives Users Early Access To Apps

Apple has announced their TestFlight Beta program, which allows Developers to seed beta builds of their apps to users, is now live. Registered Apple Developers can now distribute up to 1,000 copies of their app to testers, using the iTunes Connect portal to email invites. It's a pretty new scheme for Apple, but falls directly in line with their prior beta work with OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. With TestFlight, those Developers and companies that aren't Apple can now do exactly the same.

TestFlight was acquired by Apple fairly recently (many believe it was in the past 12 months or so, and Apple doesn't release acquisition info), and was meant as a backdoor distribution avenue for testing apps. We use it at SlashGear for testing apps that aren't ready for prime time.

If you're looking for a recent instance of TestFlight in use for testing, I'd direct you to my review of TinTag. The app accompanying the hardware was beta, and distributed via TestFlight.

So what's the difference with this beta program? Users (testers) will no longer need to jump through a series of hoops, and Developers won't have to build beta apps specifically for the phone. Previously, a tester had to submit their UDID from their device, which the Developers would have to include on the distributed beta build for them. It was a very one-on-one process, and tedious.

This allows testing on a broader scale; as we saw with OS X Yosemite, that testing has a lot of benefits. It also brings users and Developers a bit closer, and encourages a more open forum for apps to improve.

Also, you get early access to stuff, and that's always fun.

This will take a bit of time to get up and running, but once it does, look for beta testing opportunities to pop up!

Source: Apple Developer portal