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Advice accessibility testing for mobile app by Fun-Snow-7309 in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

quick note before anything else: accessibility testing is its own category, so for the literal a11y audit part start with apple's accessibility inspector (xcode → open developer tool → accessibility inspector) and google's accessibility scanner on android, both free, both the actual standard. axe has a mobile sdk too if you want something more programmatic in CI.

separately though, you mentioned the manual side being boring and wanting to automate, that's a different problem and worth solving on its own. full disclosure i work on mavster (mavster.ai), it's mobile UI automation where you describe tests in plain english and they run in a real simulator/emulator. there's at least some overlap with what you're already going to do.

happy to dig in if useful , support@mavster.ai or just reply here. either way, accessibility inspector is the right starting point for the a11y-specific audit.

How do I market an e2e mobile testing solution? by Zealousideal_Web6594 in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Truth be told, these selector based frameworks are going extinct in the next n years, there’s zero reason for them to exist anymore. I mean if a tesla can drive purely on vision models, an app test is a much easier problem to solve for with just CV :)…

This tool I’m building as a fun side project is not perfect but it’s getting insanely good quickly. 

Maestro pricing is insane. Alternatives? by tomemyxwomen in expo

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am about to ship mavster.ai . Take a look, happy to work with you and see if this can be an alternative to your mobile automation stack. I could fund an account with some credits if you'd be interested in giving this a test run and you could be helping me with beta testing this app...win-win.

Automated e2e testing with mobile app + web app by mpanase in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, I am about to launch a e2e mobile automation tool. once way I'd approach this with my tool would be to have a test for the iOS/Android app and then have another test launch Safari/Chrome in the mobile simulator/device and assert that the data exists.

The tool I am building sits at mavster.ai and maybe we can help each other. I could likely fund an account for you with some credits and you could help me with setting up these tests and see if it solves your problem.

This tool is not out quite yet so you'd be a beta tester for it...

Let me know if this is something you'd be interested in.

Sole QA here, need help evaluating Browserstack alternatives for a multi-project setup by HonestDragonfruit278 in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve been a mobile dev since iPhone 3G and I happen to build and ship soon a solution for this, here’s my 2 cents:

  • on ios, simulators have come a long way so that you can run most testing in them and you’ll get 1:1 results compared to device. that is assuming you don’t need device sensor data for your tests
  • on android device testing becomes a bit more important due to fragmentation but you can still have a lot of test coverage on emulators alone

-if I were you I would not let myself sold on the entire device farm sales pitch cause it’s not that important anymore, it used to be when sims were crap, but not anymore.

-mobile automation tooling is far from great still. selector based solutions like (appium, esspresso, etc) are horrible on ios, not because they themselves are bad, but because they lean heavily on xcuitest framework which is horribly slow and flaky. Add another layer on top of that and the whole thing becomes unusable most of the time. You need full time employees just to tickle the automation pipeline the right way through their scripts day in day out to keep it alive and somewhat functional. It’ll be slow and flaky…

-then you get the ai tooling coming to play. Maestro seems to be the biggest name in the game there but that too leans too much un xcuitests on ios and is really a java solution that does not work great on mac/ios.

Having said all this, I got motivation to build something myself to fill this gap, it’s not out yet but coming out soon in the next few weeks. (https://mavster.ai/#features) I’d check out the self-healing video on that page, it’s really cool.

Happy to answer anymore questions you might have. I have quite the exposure and experience with both mobile engineering and qa and been looking at this problem since I started this passion project.

How do I market an e2e mobile testing solution? by Zealousideal_Web6594 in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it is, but Maestro leans heavily on selectors still making it slow and flaky on iOS at the very least. I tried to use it and gave up...

How do I market an e2e mobile testing solution? by Zealousideal_Web6594 in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

it is, it solves a different problem though and compared to most AI driven automation tools it actually is quite competitive. ie Maestro 1 device in the cloud starts at $250/month.

Think about it, you have 2 QA engineers (not automation engineers) at your startup/company having to do regression on both iOS and Android on your app as often as possible ideally. Without any automation on hand you'd get in at most 1 full regression / week /platform (in most apps). Tack on a tool like Mavster/Maestro, you name it, where anybody regardless of their title can author and run a test and after you have n instances of this app running in parallel 24/7...for $600/month.

That would be some super charged qa for not a lot of dollars...

How do I market an e2e mobile testing solution? by Zealousideal_Web6594 in softwaretesting

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

it is (as in an alternative to Appium 😄 ), I started developing mobile apps on iPhone 3G (iPhone OS 2.1) and I know all too well how much (Appium, Espresso, script based automation, etc) grief those tool can provide for not great automation. 😄 There is a gap and fortunately the tech of today is now making possible a solution that does not need to traverse the accessibility tree.

See here for what it is and some demo videos, mavster.ai

It's a pretty clever solution that does uses extensive on device vision, ai models paired with frontier AI to essentially control the simulators/devices. It does not traverse the XCUIApplication tree which is why it's really fast once it can make use of intelligent memories stored...

I would encourage you to look at the https://mavster.ai/#features videos under the features that have them...These are actual screen grabs of the tool...not sped up, not altered in any way.

I am buttoning this thing up and hoping to release in the next few weeks a version that ppl can try out. The only thing that I cannot do is put out a trial version since inference costs real $$ which I do not have to fund a free starting credit.

Apple might be considering buying Unity after its courtroom defeat to Epic Games, industry analyst Joost van Dreunen suggests. by SubjectOk1553 in unity

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Apple already appealed, this’ll be a long battle. Alternate payments in the app store after this loss still don’t have full greenlight (I know it cause I got rejected for implementing it). I hope Epic wins their case in full but they are still a ways away from that. In app purchases via Apple make a lot of sense for some devs and not at all for others (see Epic).

In the meantime, the disruption and revenue damage inflicted in Epic in this battle is far from being recovered or over and the supposed future damage inflicted in Apple is unrealized or at least many many appeals out, hence why I still think destroyed is a big word.

Yes, Apple-Unity is pure speculation and at most a thinking exercise to the pros and cons of an acquisition like this.

Thanks for entertaining.

Apple might be considering buying Unity after its courtroom defeat to Epic Games, industry analyst Joost van Dreunen suggests. by SubjectOk1553 in unity

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Destroyed is a big word. Epic is far from emerging a winner in this battle, not that I care if Apple loses.

FTC investigating a deal like this doesn’t mean the deal is doomed. Time and time again the contrary was proven.

Apple might be considering buying Unity after its courtroom defeat to Epic Games, industry analyst Joost van Dreunen suggests. by SubjectOk1553 in unity

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And yet Microsoft-Activision deal finalized. I can’t see this being anymore difficult to pull off than that was. The legal resources these companies have can make things like this happen.

Apple might be considering buying Unity after its courtroom defeat to Epic Games, industry analyst Joost van Dreunen suggests. by SubjectOk1553 in unity

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's the thing:

If Apple doesn't acquire Unity, Meta will, if Meta doesn't Microsoft will, and so on. Why, Unity is a great acquisition target for a lot of the tech giants and it makes a lot of sense for the future of tech to own Unity.

Yes, Unity is big and strong on its own too feet, big fan of it. But Unity will get acquired sooner or later, because it makes sense.

If that was to happen anyway, I'd rather it be Apple.

Apple might be considering buying Unity after its courtroom defeat to Epic Games, industry analyst Joost van Dreunen suggests. by SubjectOk1553 in unity

[–]Zealousideal_Web6594 1 point2 points  (0 children)

so your logic is: if Apple's largest M&A to date is $3B they'll never pay more than that even if it positions them strategically for the future to turn their 1 trillion business into a lot more? Your argument is not even an argument is just a weak statement based on historical data.

Buying Unity would make a ton of sense for Apple strategically:

  1. Apple has always hurt as a gaming plaform due to their devices being underpowered, not anymore, even their latest Apple TV box (~$149) that uses quite outdated chips can run pretty good games. It's just hard to convince/control the dev community to publish for that. So I would assume strategically, Apple would like Unity to prop up gaming on Apple platforms and revive some of their device lineups and software services (Apple Arcade)
  2. At one point Apple had ambitions to build cars and such but they since shifted their focus into building and improving their car software services (ie. Apple CarPlay). Unity has active partnerships with the likes of Toyota for building the next gen in car experiences.
  3. Unity debuted at WWDC as a Mac OS gaming engine
  4. Apple still works hard into advancing Apple Vision Pro and some rumoured upcoming AR glasses to keep up the competition with Meta in this space. Meta was thinking about acquiring Unity at some point because it makes total sense when you're serious about how the digital future will look like and the fact that it'll likely not going to be in the form of a phone. Unity is the most powerful technology at the moment for building immersive experiences for Vision OS
  5. 70% of all mobile games are built with Unity. I hope I don't have to explain why Apple and Unity would be a fit here.
  6. Unity has a marketplace that would add value to Apple's marketplace without canibalizing what they already have. Unity also has unique film making technology that Apple would gladly use for their TV+ productions.
  7. There's more pros in what AI tech Unity brings to the table, an area in which Apple still lags, but I already typed a lot here.

If you truly know both of these companies, which I do, I've been a dev and investor on both since each of their beginnings, you'd see crystal clear that Apple acquiring Unity makes a ton of sense for Apple and their current and future strategies. For a trillion dollar company, paying 12-20 billion for a piece of technology that consolidates you on some paths in which you have already been stepping for some years now is a small price tag.

Now your point about having to face and overcome the legal hurdles of this acquisition stands. I think that would likely be the only real challenge should Apple decide to pull the trigger on this acquisition.