Apple Acquires TestFlight Owner Burstly

Apple acquired another company — great, wonderful; the most interesting news I saw after this announcement, however, came from Federico Viticci when he highlighted a recent idea MG Siegler put forth before Christmas in suggesting a Beta App Store. From Federico’s article:

“On a related rumor note, the Burstly acquisition may also indicate Apple’s intention to launch a ‘beta App Store’ service for developers to test apps publicly with subsets of users in specific regions or demographics. The idea was first suggested by MG Siegler in December 2013 and brought up again today following the acquisition news.”

Very interesting. If you, like me before coming across it by way of Federico’s article, have not read MG’s piece, I encourage you to do so: he makes a strong case for this idea. It still needs some work and presents a number of potential issues — allowing anyone access to this testing ground seems problematic, to say the least; there’s a very good reason betas of Apple’s operating systems and apps are restricted to those with a developer account — but these challenges are by no means insurmountable. And MG is right: it’s high-time Apple gave its developers these capabilities.