Phased Release for Automatic iOS Updates

Phased Release - Adventures in QA

As announced by Apple at the WWDC 2017 there will be a new AppStore coming this year with the possibility of a phased release for automatic updates. The new feature will provide companies and developers the chance to roll out new app releases to a smaller user base to see if the new version is stable and if the new feature is appreciated by the customers. Apple offers the following steps:

  • Day 1: 1 percent
  • Day 2: 2 percent
  • Day 3: 5 percent
  • Day 4: 10 percent
  • Day 5: 20 percent
  • Day 6: 50 percent
  • Day 7: 100 percent

Apple selects users for each bucket randomly based on their Apple ID, which is better than the device ID, because users may have several devices like an iPhone and iPad and then they get the same app on each device. And users can only be selected by Apple if they turned automatic updates ON.

Once an app is configured for the phased release, the app must pass each step, which is from my point of view not really flexible. Maybe companies want to start the phased release with a bigger customer group than 1, 2 or 5 percent to get faster feedback. However, on the other side it provides a nice way to monitor new features in the live environment and to react on possible issues and it’s the right way to give companies and developers more options to release an app. Stopping the phased release is possible. Developers have the option to push the app to 100% at any time via the iTunes connect.

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Smartwatch App Testing – watchOS

watchOS title - Adventures in QA

This is the second post of my smartwatch app testing series. In this post I will write about Apple’s watchOS. Apple introduced watchOS together with the first Apple Watch in April 2015. WatchOS is already available in the second version watchOS 2. If you are new to this smartwatch app testing series, in the first post I wrote about Tizen OS and the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch.

Together with the watchOS release, Apple also released the watchKit for developers, an SDK to develop apps for the smartwatch. Apple Watch apps can either be written in Objective-C or Swift, the new open source programming language from Apple. If you want to get started with watchOS, I recommend you to read the following links:

If you want to setup watchOS on your system, you can download the latest version from here. To get an overview about the architecture and the application life cycle of watchKit apps read this link.

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Mobile Test Pyramid

Mobile Test Pyramid - Adventures in QA

Anyone who is involved in software testing and software test automation should know the test automation pyramid introduced by Mike Cohn (http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/).

This article contains excerpts from my book „Hands-On Mobile App Testing“ published with Pearson Education.

As you can see in the following image, the typical pyramid consists of three layers. At the bottom, there is the automated unit-testing layer, in the middle the automated integration testing layer and at the top there is the automated end-to-end testing layer (including the user interface tests). Each layer has a different size, indicating the number of tests that should be written within each stage. Manual testing is not part of the test pyramid, hence it is shown as a cloud for additional testing work.

Test Pyramid - Adventures in QA

But this pyramid is not applicable to mobile apps and mobile test automation. Mobile testing requires a totally different set of testing activities like movement, sensors, different devices and networks compared to other software like desktop or web applications. Lots of manual testing is required to be sure that a mobile app is working as expected in the different usage scenarios.

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Mobile App Europe Summary and Slides

I am just back in Hamburg from the Mobile App Europe Conference and I am still excited about it. I had 2 great days in Potsdam meeting several mobile experts from all over the world to exchange on the latest mobile topics. I had the chance to talk to Dan Cuellar, the creator of Appium which was really great. I talked to people from booking.com, Groupon and other cool companies out there.

Another great thing was that I met Stephen Janaway and Richard Bradshaw again. We had some nice talks and at the end of the first day we were recording another episode of Testing in the Pub together with Denys Zelenchuck, Sergej Mudruk and André Gorzel.

Adventures in QA - Recording Testing in the Pub

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People in Testing with Richard Bradshaw

Adventures in QA - Richard BradshawThis time in the “People in Testing” series, I had the chance to interview Richard Bradshaw aka the FriendlyTester.

Daniel: What is currently your biggest challenge at work?

Richard: Time! I am currently the sole tester on a project. Responsible for the testing of the apps, which include iOS, Android the a responsive website. Also until recently, this also included a windows phone app. It’s a lot to manage. So it becomes a real balancing act as to where I spend my time. Fortunately the team is aware of this and we stagger the releases. We tend to have iOS ready at least a week before Android. Then the web is more sporadic, mainly because we are able to release that instantly, so the risk is lower, due to the fact we can instantly rollback or push a fix if something was to go wrong, this isn’t as easy with the apps, especially iOS, due to the submission times. Another advantage of the way we work is that the platforms are aligned, meaning that we tend to be delivering the same functionality to all at the same time. This is advantageous to me as I can test across platforms at the same time, but also as with most projects, there is a lot of tacit knowledge, so testing all three while it’s still there helps.

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