[joeld42]

You can use HockeyApp (https://hockeyapp.net/) or just get your friend's UDID and build an IPA yourself to distribute the build to your friend's device, even if he or she is remote.

Testflight is more intended for "semi-open" betas where you only have tester's email.

[bananaboy]

You can also do "internal testing" with TestFlight. That way the app is available immediately to any team members and doesn't have to go through review. You have to add the team members somewhere in the portal, but it would make sense for a co-founder to be in there.

[st3fan]

get your friend's UDID - yes, you can, but there is a 100 device limit. you can reset that list once a year. it is meant for your team, not for testers.

[st3fan]

See now that the OP talked about co-founder. So that is a good use case for an Ad Hoc build for sure.

[blhack]

Yeah, thanks for the advice everyone.

I'll totally admit that apple dev flow (not writing the software, just how to get it to run on devices) is completely foreign to me. Concepts like "itunes connect" (which seems extremely odd to me, since I always thought of iTunes as a media player, not something I would use for software development) are confusing.

Figuring it out, though. Thanks again for the advice (and sorry if I accidentally threadjacked this).

[weaksauce]

I am pretty familiar with the hoops and even to me it's pretty much a huge pain. It's not just you with that opinion.

[nicky0]

As well as the name of the music player app on Mac (on iOS it is only the music buying app), iTunes is also the umbrella term for everything related to buying stuff as a download from Apple (music, movies, books, apps). The App Store started as an offshoot of the iTunes Music Store. And it is still called the iTunes App Store in some places.

[seanwilson]

I've used Hockeyapp a few years ago for testing iOS apps and the whole workflow was a nightmare because of Apple's restrictions. You had to get users to send in IDs, add the IDs to Apple's site, download a file with the IDs in them, add the file to your app then build and deploy each time you wanted a new tester. You can't run OSX on e.g. AWS/EC2 so setting up continuous integration was troublesome and there was only unofficial third party tools for building from the command-line. Xcode and app installs would also fail all the time with obscure errors about certificates and Googling for solutions turned up hundreds of threads with different solutions and other developers being stumped.

Have things improved?

Beta testing with Android is easy. You can build the app on any OS you want from the command-line and send the app to anyone with no restrictions.

[blhack]

Thank you!