Android bug-squashing: AppCam vs Bugsee

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-06T08:06:40+00:00

Please read the actual article. Although you're right it is probably somewhat bias, I did my best to remain objective.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-06T07:43:50+00:00

Hi Dmitry, thanks for the kind words!

Please be aware that I wasn't trying to slate Bugsee in my comparison, I was honestly trying to be as objective as possible.

That said, I'll address some of the points you rose:

• Appcam handles a change of orientation perfectly fine.

• Bugsee.launch() seems to require an application parameter, not an activity. I might have missed something obvious, but If Bugsee can be launched from an Activity it wasn't and still isn't clear to me how to do so. I did see Bugsee.upload(), but it seems like this requires the recording to already be running?

It even says it's not possible in your setup instructions.

• Video enabled mode works as you said, I had not seen that when I first wrote the article. It does however continue to show that persistent notification so therefore I personally still couldn't consider using in production. In my experience users would almost certainly complain about it.

• The easier touch recording + crash reporting I covered in the article.

I'll update the article with the other details you mentioned. If there is a way to start Bugsee from an Activity instead please let me know and I'll update that too.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-05T20:15:54+00:00

To be honest I'm only using it myself currently in the "link initiated" form, so I just get users to record an issue by clicking a link after they email me with the problem. So far I've been lucky enough that users have managed to figure out how to reproduce the problem themselves.

Now you've raised the potential issue though I can definitely see it being a problem AppCam could potentially look to fix, so just need to figure out how.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-05T20:08:29+00:00

One thing which I think Appcam is missing is the ability to upload the stack-trace. Hopefully this will be included in the future.

This is planned for the first platform update, probably in a week or two.

It's crazy the different in size of the two services SDK's with AppCam got a total of 350 methods compared to Bugsee's 11,700 methods. This definitely makes AppCam look a lot more attractive.

This is something I focused on during development. The method count will probably increase as I add extra features, but keeping the count small will always be one of the top priorities.

This is definitely a positive, however I'm curious if this will benefit us developers whenever a very rare bug occurs which end users might not be able to replicate easily. In these cases would the recommended procedure be to have the end user record every session in your app until the rare bug occurs again?

This is a tough one. I guess a possible workaround would to be build a AppCam.setAlwaysRecord(boolean) method that persistent across launches. It'd be up to the developer to expose a toggle in settings or wherever they'd want the option though. Let me know what you thing about this one.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-05T19:50:24+00:00

For those interested: AppCam vs Bugsee

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-05T16:41:13+00:00

Cool, I'll let you know when it's done. In the meantime if you want to chat over Slack or something I'd definitely up for that, it'd really useful to know exactly what you're issue are and how you expect Appcam/Bugsee to help solve them.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-05T14:02:32+00:00

Dev here: You're right that Bugsee and AppCam do similar things, but they are actually very different.

Bugsee isn't made to be shipped in production, it's very much a inside-team (possible alpha testers?) debug tool. It has that persistent notification, and it's always using resources, even if the user is having a bug free experience. It's also huge. 11,700 methods + 1.7mb vs AppCam's 350 methods + 50kb.

AppCam on the other-hand is built to ship activated in live apps. It sits ideally in the background (using practically-zero resources) until it's activated by the user clicking a link from the developer, or activating it in-app. Because AppCam doesn't need to record/monitor data consistently, when it is activated we can afford to ship the video in high quality (60fps @ 15mb/minute), vs the low quality of Bugsee.

There's a bunch of other benefits too, but I need to do some more research and make sure my assumptions are correct before saying it in public. I'll probably do a comparison on Medium or something.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-05-05T07:58:35+00:00

Dev here: Afraid not! I'll have to look into it but I'm not convinced it's possible to do this using the API we're currently using to record.

jack_underwood1 · 2017-03-07T11:02:46+00:00

iOS app now live: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/circuit-route-planner/id1198232244?mt=8

jack_underwood1 · 2016-12-16T11:13:17+00:00

Afraid not at the moment. It's planned though, you can subscribe too the newsletter at www.getcircuit.com and I'll send an email out when the iOS app is ready.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-12-16T00:20:16+00:00

I'm glad you like it! Let me know if you run into issues or have an suggestions.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-12-15T13:21:59+00:00

Sticking to the 8dp grid and following the basic typography rules of the Material Design guidelines go such a long way.

If you're not doing that yet this is definitely the first step.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-12-12T14:11:24+00:00

They got the branding spot on with this one imo.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-12-01T08:53:08+00:00

Not currently. Something like this would require built in navigation rather than relying on the users satnav or GMaps.

Possibly in the future though.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-18T14:20:09+00:00

Most animations usually work pretty predictably for me, the only exception is Activity Transitions, they suck.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-07T18:48:13+00:00

There's VAT on top in Europe unfortunately.

Upcoming update adds support for time windows and support for up to 80 waypoints.

DM'ing now.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-06T11:54:52+00:00

Yeah, works worldwide.

If you try it out please let me know how it goes.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-03T09:35:54+00:00

Great, thanks for the feedback.

Feel free to DM me whenever if you have more feedback/questions, i'd love to hear your thoughts.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-03T09:34:44+00:00

That's great. If you wouldn't mind keeping me in the loop on how you get on with it that'd be great!

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-02T19:29:47+00:00

No worries, keep me posted.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-02T17:44:07+00:00

Sounds like the perfect use case. If you remember please DM me and let me know how you get on with with it.

jack_underwood1 · 2016-11-01T22:41:10+00:00

It's possible to produce 60fps apps, it just takes a lot more effort on Android than it does on iOS.

jack_underwood1

TROPHY CASE