HockeyApp Joins Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

HockeyApp Joins Microsoft

hockeyapp.net

160 pointsdavidbarker64 comments

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.

That's a good, concise explanation of a potential strategy. Excellent job!

MS will buy Xamarin next. VS is free now, you will deploy your app to tester with Hockey, test it, monitor it and then offer you Azure Mobile Services

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.

True. Also, Xamarin/Mono already gets all kinds of crap from Linux purists and being owned by Microsoft would probably made that worse....

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.

Microsoft realizes it has to be cross platform... Most important change since the new CEO arrived :)

Except that change was already well under way long before the new CEO arrived ;-)

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.

No, they just needed the new face to kick things off, so everybody can attribute the change and believe.

EEE. Watch and learn. This is why Microsoft will never die, no matter how hard some people's wishful thinking.

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 ;-)

> 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.

From: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2014/12/08/microso...

"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.

Microsoft is back for acquisitions! This is good for everyone working on tech startups.

Recent buys: Acompli - Dec 1, $200M / Aorato - Nov 13, $200M / Equivio - Oct 8, $200M / Mojang (Minecraft) - Sept 15, $2.5B

Microsft even started accepting Bitcoin today and recently did a major BD deal with Dropbox. Zombie no more.

Wow, this was unexpected, congrats to HockeyApp team! What they have built is impressive. No VC funding, no bs, just awesome work and great community.

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.

Been using Beta by Crashlytics since Apple screwed up TestFlight. If MS does continue to support iOS maybe I will switch to that.

How is your experience so far? Is it much easier? Been using Crashlytics mainly for the crash reports, never tried anything else.

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.

Truly a great service.

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?

Remember when Apple bought test flight? That sure worked out well for people building apps for multiple platforms. I'm sufficiently concerned.

I really doubt Microsoft is going to make it Windows Phone only. Windows Phone is just not that valuable as a platform.

Windows Phone and tablet software is free as in beer ;-)

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...

Congrats guys. We use HockeyApp and love it!

I'm not sure it is a good news.

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.

I agree with that, but things may be different in 2 years. And MS is also the company that gains the most money with each Android phone sold.

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.

Why downvotes? I'm only asking questions. Yes, MS strategy is cross-plateform. Now. But in a few years, who knows what MS goals will be?

IMO, taking 10 minutes to think about is not lost time.

I didn't down vote, but you're not just asking questions; you're masking a statement in form of a question.

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.

Edit: I didn't downvote you.

My comment would apply to any acquisition. If I'd use an analytics tool for Facebook acquired by Twitter, I'll take 10 minutes to think about it.

I'm not anti-MS. I was one of the first to make Windows Phone apps. I like a lot Nadela, but do you know how many time will he stay MS CEO?

As I said, MS is not only interested in Windows Phone but win a lot of money with Android.

We probably continue to use HockeyApp but I'm not fan of the "don't ask questions that may hurt" bashing here.

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?

> Yes, MS strategy is cross-plateform. Now. But in a few years, who knows what MS goals will be?

Equally, HockeyApp exists. Now. But in a few years, who knows where they'll be?

Basically, betting long-term on a startup is a bad bet. So you want them to be acquired by someone. I'm not sure who else out there would be better.

It wasn't easy to find out what HockeyApp actually does. Here's some information buried in their site:

http://support.hockeyapp.net/kb/about-general-faq/general-qu...

I found it quite easy to find on the front page of their website, http://hockeyapp.net/features.

Great news.

What I love about HockeyApp (vs TestFlight) is that I don't really have to bother with the App Store Review Guidelines.

Makes testing much faster. Plus, they show they care when it comes to integration: tons of help, plus a special wizard to make it easy.

Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with hockey...

Not even with ice hockey!

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...

I believe I've read in the past that its a play on "Ad-Hoc".

Yes, also disappointed its not about hockey.

If they aren't hockey related, at least they could have gone all out with hockey branding and terminology!

HockeyApp is awesome. They're very supportive, and the tooling itself is very good. Happy for them!

I was afraid it's another of those HTML5 hybrid providers, but it's actually something useful.

"What browsers work with HockeyApp? We have developed and tested with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari." Kinda funny.

Awesome, hope they keep supporting iOS and Android distribution.

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.

"When we founded our company, our intent and mission was to always stay indie."

You sold out, dude.

Everyone has a price. Everyone.

Especially me. I'm even cheap!

You say it like it's some mark of shame.

They built a product, found success, a bigger company wanted it, and then found more success via acquisition.

What's wrong with that?

He identified a strong discrepancy between their vision and their decision. What's wrong with that?

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