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Comment by iphonedev | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure this is not a great idea.

However, one thing I'd like to see is a quality group of beta testers for apps that can give good consistent feedback on new versions. Currently I have a few friends/family in my beta network, but getting feedback from them is like pulling teeth b/c ad hoc installation is so stupidly cumbersome.

If someone could create a network of willing beta testers that want to test certain categories of apps, that would be a winner.

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Apologies for the unintentional misdirect. This group is meant for EXACTLY that. A quality group of folks developing apps to let other developers test releases and give feedback. you are right, the community needs something like this to help each other out... (wanted to add this in but the headline was limited to 80 char and ultimately went for a marketing headline instead...)

not sure how many folk have actually reviewed and given feedback to apps yet but i just downloaded an app, tried it out and actually like it... and was worth a rating.

do you have something coming out soon? would love to have a look...

There's a way to bundle your app with an embedded mobileprovision file, so that building a beta amounts to double clicking a file with an iTunes icon and hitting Sync. Makes adding an app feel like adding a song to their library and to their iPhone would; much easier to explain than "drag this seemingly random file over to your iphone..."

Can you elaborate? I have learned to build IPA files, but I still require my testers to install mobilevprovision file separately. It would be nice if all could be packaged in one single file...

Making the .ipa should do the trick. You can test by renaming app.ipa to app.zip, unzipping it and looking in the .app bundle for embedded.mobileprovision. Also: you can see which UDIDs are valid for the profile (to make sure everyone who should have access, does) by opening it up in your text editor.

wait, embedded.mobileprovision file is already there when xcode is done building the FooBar.app package.

Are you saying that you remove it from the package and replace with the Ad-Hoc FooBar.mobileprovision file that you download from Apple's developer site?

mob4hire?

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