Over the last week I worked on a new project for the Palm Pre & Pixi smartphones called “My webOS Apps“, check out my previous blog post for more information. I had a problem with it though, in that I could not possibly test it fully myself, as it logs into a persons account on developer.palm.com, and different people have different setups. I could only test using my account.
Enter the Beta App Catalog. Palm allow you to submit an app to a Beta section of their App Catalog. This requires no review, and is generally available to everyone within an hour. This allows for very rapid feedback from users. I received lots of bug reports from people, helped by the fact that I added a “Report A Problem” link in the app which emailed logs to me automatically.
In three days I released about 18 versions of the app, each one fixing issues that users had found. Just yesterday I submitted the app to the main App Catalog, something that would have taken far longer without the amazingly quick feedback loop with the users that the Beta App Catalog provides. For a developer, it really is fantastic.
Well done Palm!