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Apple acquires Buddybuild

buddybuild.com

121–130 of 170 posts

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple already has a shop in Vancouver

Seems like a huge waste of money to put software engineers in an Apple store.

Given that Apple Stores average about $5000/sq ft in revenue, it would be big waste to have that space taken up by software engineers.

You can purchases strata title triple A class office space in Vancouver for less than that.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/unprecedented...

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#122

I recently posted an „Ask HN“ asking for a flexible CI system. Most of the suggestions were proprietary hosted SaaS solutions. I was sceptical, and things like that keep me sceptical. Sure, setting up a CI system yourself is maybe a bit harder than using a hosted solution. But if the provider decides to change their offering, you are in big trouble. You‘ll need to spend a lot of time switching to a new sevice, migrat…

> Setting up a CI system yourself is maybe a bit harder than using a hosted solution. But if the provider decides to change their offering, you are in big trouble.

I love how GitLab does it. It owns the parts watching your branches for commits and passing instructions to your machine, but the instructions themselves are a clean YAML file in the root of your repo, so if at any point you want to pack things and switch over to another provider it’s all right there in plain text.

Manual setup looked a bit daunting initially but turned out to be not that hard to wrap your head around and totally worth it, simple configuration with one runner has worked like a charm for months. Between ease of setup and zero lock-in this seems to strike a pretty good balance.

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point, is there much point in using Jenkins? Aren't there much lighter weight alternatives?

If you know a good one, definitely let me know. Generally the only constraints are open source with a permissive license & on-premises installs. One benefit is it can already integrate with whatever else is out there. When we switched from GitLab to GitHub Enterprise at work, our CI environment just needed to point somewhere else.

Why did you switch from GitLab? What should we improve?

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like an acqui-hire to me.

Yeah, maybe they are opening up a shop in Vancouver.

If you mean an office, there is already an engineering office here in Vancouver, BC. (As others have posted, there is also a few retail stores)

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#125

And just like that, by dropping Android support, Buddybuild goes from viable solution to total non-starter. Does any serious mobile app development these days really go all-in on one platform?

We put off an Android version of our app for nearly two years to concentrate development on the iOS version, and the numbers we get from our Android version - less than 10% of the market and 1% of the subscriptions - prove that was the right thing to do. We'd drop Android completely as the wasteland it is if not for the PR optics of having it.

Putting off the Android version for two years is a great way to have your potential Android audience move on to your competitors and squander any marketing and networking effect.

Noone remembers your app exists after a few months, why did you expect anyone to give a damn about your product after two whole years?!

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#126
post #29

I'm happy for the founders, this is probably a good and profitable exit for them. But as a customer I am really sad and disappointed. Apple has a very bad reputation when it comes to taking over products like this. TestFlight is the prime example. TestFlight basically disappeared for a year until coming back as a more limited and slower Apple branded service. And by slow I mostly mean, it takes 6 months for bugs to b…

Testflight is completely useless now.

Testflight is extremely useful if you want to test your production build before releasing it to the public. Before Apple bought it there was no way to test the exact same build before releasing it on the App Store.

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#127
post #115
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic still applies. 1. Start with platform you're most comfortable with. 2. Iterate on product until you have a winning formula 3. Replicate on 2nd platform to double revenues Building is a lot easier than identifying what to build, better to speedily experiment on one platform.

In my opinion the new logic is build in React Native (unless your app fits in the 10% of use cases that won't work well with RN), then deploy to both at once. We have had excellent results.

I'd say RN won't work well in 99% cases.

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#128
post #31
post #29

I'm happy for the founders, this is probably a good and profitable exit for them. But as a customer I am really sad and disappointed. Apple has a very bad reputation when it comes to taking over products like this. TestFlight is the prime example. TestFlight basically disappeared for a year until coming back as a more limited and slower Apple branded service. And by slow I mostly mean, it takes 6 months for bugs to b…

Apple is notoriously bureaucratic. So its not surprising that innovation is stifled. I really hate this duality b/w innovation and stability... perhaps if more startups were focused on longer term survivability, it would be better for society overall?

Can you give me some examples? I heard the IS&T department is plague with it and is a department to avoid at all cost according to Glassdoor.

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppCenter.ms has many similar features and supports iOS, Android, Windows, ReactNative, Xamarin, and others. [Disclaimer: As I'm a PM on the AppCenter team I'll leave evaluation of goodness to others :)]

Any plans to add Gitlab support to roadmap? Dealbreaker on our end. Email in profile if you'd rather not answer publicly. :)

Yes! GitLab support is on our roadmap.

Re: Apple acquires Buddybuild

#130
post #4
post #2

Goodbye Android builds. edit: yup; On March 1, 2018 buddybuild will stop servicing apps on the Free Starter Plan. Also on March 1st, the buddybuild service will stop supporting Android apps for all plans. Any historical data related to those apps will be deleted from the service at that time.

This gives my current team two months to find a new solution. Buddybuild, aside from the odd issue from time to time, had been a great solution for us. Now we're suddenly wondering where to go next. Not to mention, we now face the question of whether to move our iOS apps off buddybuild as well.

Have a look at App Center as well! https://appcenter.ms/ It is easy to setup and supports Android and iOS apps, as well as cross-platform ones. (Disclaimer: I am on that team)
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