Hey, the business reason to buy it is clear. Nobody develops for Windows Phone, but everybody has the burden to develop for two plataforms: iOS and Android. If MS lower the burden and automatically makes it very, very easy to develop for Windows Phone, they will finally have some decent software in their plataform.
MS won't buy Xamarin unless someone else is planning to buy it. They probably have some sort of exclusive agreement to give MS priority when buying. It is simply cheaper for MS to let Xamarin run itself than to take it under the wing of MS.
I've always wondered, if MS want more apps to support their platform, how come they're the only mobile OS (including the obscure ones) that doesn't support OpenGL ES? Way to shoot themselves in the foot...
I just signed-up with HockeyApp this morning and have been very impressed with the experience. Congratulations to the team!
Previously we'd been using TestFlight for iOS and the PLsy Store's built-in beta-test functionality for Android, but it is convenient to have one service that supports a range of mobile OSs and a lower-friction deployment process.
When TestFlight was bought by Apple, they fairly quickly abandoned support for non-iOS pltforms. I'm confident that Microsoft isn't short-sighted enough to do something similar.
> Except that change was already well under way long before the new CEO arrived
Nadella didn't emerge out of nowhere, he was already an executive at Microsoft and was driving many of the kinds of changes that have accelerated since he became CEO even before becoming CEO.
They didn't went all in ( Office = milk cow), they did a huge shift now with Satya Nadella.
That is a fundemental change vs. a change from the inside ( before it was pushed because some people grasped the concept and they were allowed to try it out)
Yeah it was shortly after Satya taking over that MS Office for iPad was released. They'd obviously had the code there, but the authority to actually get it out seemed to be lacking.
Sad but true. Ballmer could have done the same things but wouldn't have got the same response.
It generally takes Microsoft years to do things. Anyone who doesn't realize all this stuff was already a long way down the pipeline needs hitting with a cluestick ;-)
"We will integrate HockeyApp into the Application Insights service in Visual Studio Online to expand Application Insights support for iOS and Android." Seems to me they're positioning themselves for more cross platform development.
It's interesting to see the consolidation in this space. HockeyApp is the #2 most used crash reporting library for Android according to our stats: http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/tag/crash-reporting/...
The #1, crashlytics, was acquired in early 2013 by Twitter, and BugSense was acquired by Splunk.
I use it for Enterprise apps mostly to send to myself. Internally we have a website where people can get our apps but for testing on multiple devices it's OK. Haven't tried it on a lot of users though. TestFlight was awesome but now it's mostly horrible once Apple made it so painful.
Congrats to Michael and team on this! After Apple bought TestFlight and relaunched their testing offering this year at WWDC, it was clear Hockey would have a problem competing in the Apple device space (even though I think their product is superior to what TestFlight was -- haven't used the new TestFlight enough to compare).
The tools are great for users and developers and I think this will be great for Microsoft. Glad to see it end up in good hands.
Also used to use Testflight when they still did Android, and signed up with Hockey App yesterday. Hope the Microsoft acquisition doesn't mean that I'll have to find another beta testing platform again!
This is really interesting. Microsoft has HockeyApp and Apple has TestFlight. I wonder if this is a push on their part to enhance the testing tooling available for Windows Phone.
Microsoft's strategy is shifting away from Windows Phone only, and is working hard on getting their non-windows software stack on all devices. While it will probably help windows phone tooling, Microsoft is painfully aware of the small market share WP has compared to iOS and Android.
I had used HockeyApp for 3 months while testing my current set of mobile apps. I had used it to test an iPhone app and it was terribly painful. Those pains were mostly from Apple's end though. Once I had found out Apple bought TestFlight, I canceled my HockeyApp subscription. Does anyone have any input on the comparison of HockeyApp and Play Store beta testing for the testing process of android apps?
Apple uses software to sell hardware, and usually stops supporting other platforms when it buys things. That's how its closed, proprietary world works.
Microsoft makes its money from software not hardware, and most of it comes via third parties not direct sales. It licenses most of its software across multiple brands of hardware, and it's been supporting non-Windows platforms (in the form of Mac OS and iOS) for a long time. It's already hosting Linux on Azure.
It's not going to close off markets for doctrinaire reasons, only if there's no money in them...
In one hand it's great to hear that Analytics will be added and cross support is still important.
But in the other hand, it puts developers in inconfortable position. Should we still use HockeyApp for our iOS apps? Depend on a tool owned by a concurrent of your target platform is not so safe on a long term sight..
I'm not too worried about it. After all, MS has released Office on iOS, and partnered with Xamarin for iOS development. They'd be insane to buy HockeyApp then kill everything it has and replace it with a Windows Phone only solution.
It's weird, but MS is almost one of the best large companies to do cross-platform dev with these days.
Microsoft has also been providing software for Macs since 1984, when it appeared at the launch, and it generally makes more money per head from Mac users (who buy lots of copies of Windows and Office) than Windows users (roughly $45 each per 4-5 years).
The only reason it would quit on iOS is if it couldn't make any money from iOS users. And the only reason it wouldn't be able to make money from iOS users would be if Apple went down in flames.
> "Microsoft has also been providing software for Macs since 1984, when it appeared at the launch, and it generally makes more money per head from Mac users (who buy lots of copies of Windows and Office) than Windows users (roughly $45 each per 4-5 years)."
All true, but that hasn't prevented the quality of MS software on Macs from varying between first class and complete bottom of the barrel.
Right now iOS/OSX seems to be enjoying high priority at Microsoft, but this hasn't always been the case, even when Macs were popular.
Normally I'd say that this is all fairly inconsequential, but HockeyApp is a very core part of our development process and build system, and disentangling ourselves of it is going to be a lot more complicated than, say, swapping analytics providers. Definitely not something you can do on a dime, which makes any potential sudden moves pretty concerning.
And post-acquisition startups (regardless of who acquired them) tend to be full of sudden moves...
> All true, but that hasn't prevented the quality of MS software on Macs from varying between first class and complete bottom of the barrel.
Life isn't that simple. Somebody once had the idea that, to save money, the Windows version of Office could be converted for Mac OS instead of developed separately. Apple users quickly let Microsoft know that they didn't like it, and Microsoft went back to the earlier system.
Meanwhile, Apple doesn't bother trying to program stuff for Windows. Its Windows programs are crap but it just ignores the cries of pain from Windows users of iTunes.
> Right now iOS/OSX seems to be enjoying high priority at Microsoft, but this hasn't always been the case, even when Macs were popular.
Macs have never been popular, by DOS/Windows standards, and they still represent a very small minority of the installed base. However, Microsoft understands the difference between the installed base and the actual market (ie people spending money). A Mac user who buys Windows from Microsoft is much more profitable than a Windows user who gets a bundled OEM version.
I don't see the relevance to the point I'm making, which isn't a value judgment on Microsoft.
It's apprehension because Microsoft in the past decade has been full of sudden strategic shifts and abandoned platforms. I'm mildly concerned about HockeyApp for this reason.
For the most part's Microsofts wishy-washy strategy - especially when it comes to support of Apple's platforms - is fairly inconsequential. The sucky version of Office for OSX was, at the end of the day, a minimal pain.
HockeyApp on the other hand is a very deeply integrated part of my development stack. I can't weather the same amount of uncertainty and sudden movement as I can some of my other tools. This makes me mildly nervous about their future.
Don't agree with your perception of Microsoft's strategy, most of which makes perfect sense if you apply one simple rule: follow the money.
Since HockeyApp is now part of Microsoft's cross-platform, mobile-first strategy, the main question is whether a failing HockeyApp would be more likely to survive on its own or as part of Microsoft.
If it's a success, it's never going to be a problem -- or at least, not until Windows Phone/Windows 10 has a hugely dominant market share in smartphones and tablets. If that happens, I expect you'll have other things to worry about ;-)
Considering Microsoft's strategy lately has been to provide cross platform support, I wouldn't assume that iOS is out of the picture unless there is an announcement. Look at Microsoft Band for example, it supports iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Also the biggest news lately was .NET going cross platform and will run on OSX and Linux.
When you're in such an unstable environment as using a 3 year old startup to build apps for a 7 year old OS, I don't think that worrying about 2 years down the line is really worth it.
If Microsoft hadn't bought them, what would Hockey look like in 2 years? What will iOS look like in 2 years?
Downvotes are possibly because your comment could be read as instinctively/tribally anti Microsoft.
Yes, MS and Apple are competitors. But what would they have to gain by shutting-down iOS support? People would just move to TestFlight (Apple owned), which would gain MS noting at all and probably earn them some justifiable bad feeling.
Nadela-era Microsoft is looking to be a different and more open beast than the Gates and Balmer era company.
Ahaha. Yah I was surprised to see no relation. Or perhaps there is one that we don't know ? I thought maybe they were a Canadian company, but they don't seem to be...
It fits nicely within the dev story around getting .net and C# running across platforms along with the Xamarin partnership. With testflight evaporating, this is a logical acquisition. Does it make sense to keep it open to native devs? Sure. They can have ramps placed in front of them for using Azure and various telemetry solutions.
