Don’t worry Apple fans; you won’t have to wait too long for iOS 7.

iOS 7 delay rumors have been shut down, and according to recent reports iOS 7 is on its way. It will be available for a preview release in June and will fully launch in September.

While delay rumors have circulated, Darrell Etherington, of TechCrunch says changes have been made so that Apple can proceed on schedule:

“Apple blogger and noted beard-wearer Jim Dalrymple gave one of his famous one-word confirms today on his blog, agreeing with a source which told AllThingsD that while Apple has had to shift engineering resources away from OS X to iOS to make sure things proceed on schedule, the update will arrive on time.”

The struggle of meeting deadlines and properly extending your engineering and QA resources plagues almost all organizations, so it’s no wonder Apple has been facing this predicament. Hopefully they can utilize the right people and services to get the development and test coverage they need to launch iOS 7 successfully.

So what’s coming in iOS?

Etherington says while Apple hasn’t spelled out the updates, it is expected that Apple is working on a new, modernized UI – something Apple hasn’t dared to make major changes to in years.

What do you hope Apple includes in iOS 7? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

The title of the post says it all:

When it comes to software bugs, the devil is in the ____. VentureBeat reports that a small subset of Mac users are experiencing a bug within the Messages app that deletes the last word of said messages when sent to an iPhone.

Judging from past experience, I have no doubt that the bug will be fixed in short order. What I found interesting about the situation, however, was the way in which the issues was originally reported by a user. Often times, users will post gripes along the lines of “this app sucks and doesn’t work.” Not so in this case. Here is a terrific, detailed bug report from the Apple message boards:

- It’s repeatable.  For example, the following message always causes the issue:  “man, why are you here?  Two are in testing places”.  On the iPhone it appears as “man, why are you here?  Two are in testing”.

- It’s a problem with iMessages.  If I send the exact same text from the iPhone, it goes through just fine.  The message has to originate from MacOS iMessages.  (I’m using the latest Mountain Lion and all updates as of 12/21/12)

- The full message is actually being successfully transferred to the phone;  it just does not display correctly.  There are two pieces of evidence for this.  If on the iPhone, the user copies the truncated message and pastes it somewhere else, the full message is pasted!  Moreover,  on the top level the messages app (where you see the last message from all the recent people you texted with), the full message displays.

- It can happen with both short and longer messages.   Here’s another longer message I noticed got cut off: “That’s funny that you though I was joking when I said I was debugging.  Why is that so weird?”

Read the Rest >>>

Last month, uTest introduced a brand new UI for Apphance, a mobile quality tool that makes it easy for mobile app developers to understand how their apps are working across a wide range of mobile devices, carriers and locations. After making so many improvements to the UI, we’re ready to turn our attention to the other half of the Apphance software stack – the SDKs. Today we’re launching a new and improved version of the iOS SDK, version 1.8.8, that adds several features and enhancements our users have been asking for. Let’s take a look at a few of the big ones:

Two-Finger Swipe Bug Reporting

One of Apphance’s coolest features is in-app bug reporting. You simply shake the device and Apphance responds by taking a screenshot and allowing the user to write a complete bug report right on the device itself. Our customers love this feature because it allows them to see bugs in the same context as they were discovered, along with important details and information about the device and app state.

While most users prefer to trigger bug reports by shaking the device, some of our customers have asked us for an alternative. Many of them use the accelerometer for other purposes, or they’re developing fitness apps where the device is always in motion. With this new update, we’re introducing an alternative (and optional) bug reporting approach that relies on swiping your fingers upwards from the lower corners of the screen.

Instructions for changing the bug reporting mechanism are available in the Apphance help topics. By default, Apphance will still trigger bug reports using the accelerometer, but switching to the two-finger swipe method can be accomplished by adding just two lines of code.

Read more…

When you think about bad mobile app security, Android tends to come to mind. The open nature of Android makes it (theoretically) easier for malicious apps to find their way into the app store and onto users’ devices. While intentionally malicious apps may be a problem for Android, when it comes to data leaks and the loss of personal information iOS is actually a bigger security offender, according to Veracode’s recent State of Software Security report. From Computer Weekly:

Surprisingly, 26% of Android apps exhibited information leakage bugs, compared with 42% on iOS. This covers the leakage of personal information such as email, text messages, GPS coordinates, and the content of users’ address books.

“When you install Android, it requests access to certain phone functionality. The app developer has to request explicit access, while on iOS a developer does not have to request access,” said [Chris Eng, vice-president of research at Veracode].

Even when developers take the extra steps to make their apps secure, their approaches may be miss guided. Trying to build in cryptographic keys to protect user data can actually make security worse if not done correctly. This issue is troubling for both major operating systems.

Overall, cryptographic issues affected a sizeable portion of Android (64%) and iOS (58%) applications.

The report warned that using cryptographic mechanisms incorrectly can make it easier for attackers to compromise the application. Cryptographic keys are used to protect transmitted or stored data.

It found that in some applications, developers had hard-coded a cryptographic key directly into a mobile application. Should these hard-coded keys be compromised, any security mechanisms that depend on the privacy of the keys are rendered ineffective.

Mobile app security is complicated. Developers and testers need to keep working to understand the issues and learn how to best address them.

One of the big mobile app testing considerations involves social media – i.e. how well does the app integrate with Facebook, Twitter, etc. For most developers, this is a major pain point. But for the makers of Rando – a random photo-sharing app – that won’t be a problem. Here’s TechCrunch with the story of an app developer that decided to go anti-social:

Unlike most photo-sharing apps, Rando eschews the usual social network trappings. You can’t like photos, favourite them, comment on them or share them to other social networks directly from the app. But this is very much a feature, not a bug: ustwo calls Rando an “anti-social photosharing app”. (There are still a fair few bugs in the app though — but ustwo says a new more stable build should go live on the AppStore tomorrow.)

This means that Rando feels closer in philosophy to ephemeral photo-messaging app Snapchat, which deliberates curtails social exposure by auto-destructing photos after they have been viewed, than it does to a highly visible, highly self-conscious image swapping network like Instagram.

Setting aside sending and viewing randos (and waiting to receive them), all you can currently do is delete received randos so they don’t live forever in your stack, or flag a rando as inappropriate — always a risk with apps that let strangers swap visual messages. Still, the risk of Rando being deluged with porn, a la Chatroulette or the early days of Vine, seems fairly low. For starters, this is static photo-sharing (not video) so the hardcore exhibitionists will probably look elsewhere to get their kicks.

There’s also no instantaneous photo swap gratification: after you’ve sent a rando you have to wait in a queue til a rando has been created that can be sent to you. So at quieter times you could be waiting hours. Which doesn’t sound like the ideal environs for flashers to flourish. The app doesn’t support pure voyeurists either since you can’t just view other people’s randos. You have to make and send a rando to get one back.

Read the Rest >>>

Part of having a successful app is understanding the app economy as a whole – or, at the very least, the state of the category you’re about to enter. Number of downloads is one metric. Longevity and number of versions/updates are a few more. Star ratings and reviews offer some insight. But how can you judge the overall health of the app market? That’s the question the Applause Index set out to answer. The brand new index is “the first-ever way to measure and track the state of user satisfaction in the mobile apps economy.” Here’s how it works, from the Applause App Analytics Blog:

Similar to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Applause Index provides a daily look at how users feel about the bellwether iOS and Android apps and assigns a weighted, cumulative score (again, similar to those used to measure the overall stock market). This enables journalists, analysts and mobile decision makers to understand trends in the macro apps economy and make more informed decisions.

The Applause Index also includes a full complement of sub-indices that measure specific categories of market-representative apps across ten key categories, including Gaming; Lifestyle; Entertainment, Travel and Content.

The Applause Index is calculated based upon the Applause Score of 60 iOS and 60 Android apps that meet rigorous selection criteria. It then applies a weighted formula to produce a daily cumulative score across these bellwethers. The result is a top-down look at the overall sentiment of users about the apps economy; across categories; across app stores; and over time.

Those bellwether apps include Angry Birds, Evernote, Yelp, Netflix, PayPal, Quora, NFL Mobile and Skype, just to name a few. Here’s a few examples of the criteria used to select the indexed apps:

• Number of app versions and app reviews
• Length of time an app has been available
• Performance data across Applause Attributes
• Representative allocation across app store categories
• 100% overlap between the list of 60 iOS and 60 Android apps

To learn more bout the Applause Index, read the full post on the App Analytics Blog, or check the index out for yourself! To see how your apps, your competition’s apps or your favorite apps are faring in the hands of users, look them up on Applause.

Daniel Knott over at Adventures in QA always has great testing advice. One of his most recent posts discusses the importance of testing to ensure updating an app won’t disrupt your users. We’re not talking about testing the latest version to make sure it’s not buggy, we’re talking about the actual updating process – what happens on your users’ device when they hit that little “install update” button. Daniel highlights three key factors that should be tested for:

• The update will not log out users if they are logged in on the old version
• The update will not effect any existing data (e.g. existing data will not be deleted or modified)
• The update will install correctly

Daniel details how to test updates on iOS (using iTunes or the iPhone Configuration Utility)  and Android (using abd) – you can see a step by step guide for each technique by visiting the Adventures in QA post. An important part of these tests is to not delete the existing app from your testing device – you’re not testing a straight install, you’re testing that updating an existing app on a user’s device will go smoothly. Once you go through the actual installing update procedures, manually poke around the app to be sure nothing usual happened. Specifically, you want to be sure all the settings, inputs and data you had in the original app are still in place after the update is complete. If you can, run the test once while you’re already logged into the (old) app and once when you are currently logged out.

People are bad about updating, so it is highly likely that some users won’t be updating from the most recent version of the app. If possible, run update testing on several previous versions of the app (going back an additional two or three versions is probably safest). This can be a hard testing requirement to meet but practices like in-the-wild testing can help you fill the gaps.

Update testing should be part of your normal mobile application testing every time you create a new version of an  existing app. After all, an awesome new versions isn’t going to be much use if it doesn’t update correctly for your loyal users (and a bad update can even drive users away). When all the testing is done and a new version is released, keep an eye on post-launch app analytics to make sure users are happy with the latest release (and if they’re not, see exactly what they don’t like from version to version).

iPhone owners in Europe are discovering that newer is not always better when it comes to mobile operating systems. Today we learn that carriers Vodafone and 3 are warning iPhone 4S users against updating to iOS6.1. Why? Because of problems with 3G connectivity. First world problems, to be sure, but a problem nonetheless.

Here’s VentureBeat with the story:

The iOS  6.1 update was issued in late January and offered new features like the  ability to buy movie tickets from within Siri. But many iPhone owners also noted that it has led to excessive battery usage, in addition to the  networking issues Vodafone UK and 3 Austria pointed out. Apple will likely fix  the issues in its next update, iOS 6.1.1, which is currently in beta testing  with developers.

It’s not unusual for carriers to warn their customers about specific upgrades  if they have issues with their cellular networks. I haven’t seen as many reports  about iOS 6.1 causing issues on U.S. carriers — for the most part, iPhone owners  in the U.S. have been complaining about the battery hit from the update.

Here is Vodafone’s official statement:

We’re aware of an issue caused by Apple  iPhone 4S handsets that have been upgraded to iOS 6.1 which impacts performance on 3G.  Some customers may occasionally experience difficulty in connecting to the  network to make or receive calls or texts or to connect to the internet.

Apple is working on a solution to their software issue. These connection  problems are intermittent. While Apple’s investigations continue, we would  recommend that anyone who has not yet installed iOS 6.1 on their iPhone 4S  should delay doing so until Apple has confirmed that the problem has been  fixed.

Read the Rest >>>

There are countless factors that make an app a good one – from app store ratings to downloads.  Yet, most importantly a successful app needs to have a great user interface (UI) and a great user experience (UX). Most developers know that when it comes to developing for mobile, a dazzling UI and an intuitive in-app experience are not an easy to achieve.

Mobile devices and tablets present a unique set of challenges from the screen size, to touch screen; the way users use apps is vastly different than the web. In addition, these types of devices haven’t been around that long and most developer don’t have usability mastered yet. However, some do – and Harrison Webber of The Next Web recently put together a list of them. Here is his list of the top iOS apps with the best user experience and user interface:

“Paper for iPad

So much has been said of Paper by FiftyThree, that it feels like the app has existed for ages. Perhaps the most elegant drawing app on tablets today, Paper made its debut back in March of 2012, and has since added an innovative color mixer.

More than anything else, Paper’s simplistic use of notebooks for storing drawings, its limited color palette and organic-feeling brushes make it worth a try. While the in-app purchases have frustrated some, we can’t help but find the quality worth it, as they greatly extend the app’s functionality.

Rechner

Back in March we proclaimed that Berger & Föhr and Aeliox’s minimalistic, gesture-powered calculator app actually managed to make math sexy. Nine months later, we stand by that statement, as Rechner continues to stand out for ditching the usual, crowded jumble of buttons for a few simple swipes and four rows of numbers.

So long as the 5 minute learning curve doesn’t put you off, Rechner is very intuitive. All you need to remember is that swiping to the right is “+,” swiping to the left is “–,” swiping up is “=,” and swiping with two fingers in any direction clears the screen. Read our full review here.

Clear

Impossible to ignore for its innovative user interface, Clear, made by Impending and Realmac Software, broke boundaries by ditching iOS standards like buttons in favor of gestures, taps and pinching. As we detailed back in February, Clear is the type of app that makes you rethink the way that you’ve been using your phone altogether, breaking the mold and re-forming it with just a few minutes of use.

How to use: To create new list items, drag down. To reorder them, tap and hold, then slide. To insert a new item between two others, pinch apart and to go ‘back’ a level, pinch inwards. Swiping left or right will check an item off or delete it. For more on Clear, read our review here.

Fantastical for iPhone

For many, Fantastical’s recently released iPhone app quickly replaced Apple’s default calendar, just as it did on the Mac. Fantastical’s no-nonsense approach, natural language parsing engine and DayTicker make it noteworthy.

As we detailed back in November, Fantastical’s DayTicker feature is a ribbon-shaped display of your current day and the surrounding days, making it incredibly fast to see what you’ve got coming up at a glance. Read more on Fantastical here.”

Read the rest on the Software Testing Blog.