A few weeks ago we brought you a rundown of our five favourite automation testing tools for Android, and the response was overwhelming. So we’ve written a follow-up article, this time for iOS developers. The testing challenges vary slightly for Android and iOS testing. For one thing there are far more Android models out there than iOS, which means lots more potential bugs. Also, the two variants have their own default languages, which further complicates things.

We hope you’ve had a fantastic summer and are now enjoying the fall. After our release of Bugfender 2 earlier in the year, we’ve been fine tuning and adding many UI improvements. We’ve also been working on an improved filter view, enhancing issues and adding React Native support – all coming very soon, so watch this space.

When we think of other products in Bugfender’s space, we don’t really think of competitors; we think of alternatives. Because, being honest, Bugfender doesn’t really have any direct competitors. That sounds like cheesy marketing, right? Yep, we get that. And we don’t say it to be arrogant. We say it because Bugfender was built to provide a unique service in our space. In fact it’s designed to serve the specific needs of our parent company, Mobile Jazz.

Developers are a fussy bunch. We sweat on the tiniest details and every aspect of our product has to be just right. We don’t like entrusting our precious designs to anyone outside our inner circle. Yet we’re increasing delegating key quality assurance (QA) tasks to robots. The market for automated testing products is expected to be worth $20 billion by 2023 – three times as much as now.

Realistically speaking, how many times do you redownload an application that’s buggy? Unless it’s a hugely beneficial app, which one might begrudgingly use (off the top of my head, I can’t think of any that aren’t replaceable), users tend to just switch to an alternative app that does the same thing — sans bugs.

Solving a Rubik’s Cube. Skiing uphill. Completing Goldeneye on the N64 and looking suave when standing next to George Clooney. These are all things which are harder than marketing your product to developers. But, to be honest, we can’t think of too many more. We’ve tried everything to promote Bugfender to the development community. Being developers ourselves, we should have known how difficult this would be.

We’re really happy to announce that Bugfender 2.0 went live in last quarter – a long awaited release that brings many feature requests from our users. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your feedback. It’s truly invaluable and helps us to improve Bugfender every day. As some of you may be aware, the service experienced some occasional down time during June.

We created this resource to solve one basic problem: Once you go through all the work of building an app, how can you be sure to nail the landing? In the rush to get an app out, many developers can forget to tag releases or lose depository information that simply needed to be earmarked for a future update. There are some final security measures that need to be taken to protect your app. Whether it’s due to excitement or fatigue, it happens.

In 2016, on the eve of the Black Friday sales frenzy in the US, a research firm called Apteligent released a report estimating how much money firms could lose if their apps crashed on the big day. The report tallied up the amount of money spent by retail app customers on Black Friday the previous year and worked out what would happen if every customer experienced at least one crash during peak hours.

I’d like to offer a heartfelt apology to all of our users who have experienced any downtime and issues with Bugfender recently. We’re really sorry these have occured and for all of the inconveniences they may have caused you. We understand that many people rely on Bugfender to help them in their daily duties and that our service has let you down.