beta testers? Where to steal them?

[mac_girl]

Hi, where do you guys get beta testers? and also can you tell me how you test your own apps?

I have been wrestling with the idea of making a project I'm working on free or not free and at first I was thinking I could release it free because its just a puzzle piece of my 'real' bigger project and if it worked ok than I'd know the code in my real project would work too (kind of tricking people into unwittingly being my test subjects (beta-testers) :sneaky: :p bwahahahaha...hmm). i'm not sure now if I'm going to do it that way though...

So, can anybody tell me how they test their apps on OSes/platforms/versions of platforms maybe they don't have physically? I got a suggestion from another forum to go to an apple store and ask to try out my app that i'd have on a pendrive or something...but then I'd also have to go to a compusa or something and I'm not sure that I'd want to do that it would be embarrassing if they said NO o.O Also if there is a bug I couldn't keep going back home and fix it then come back again...they might get mad at me :blush:

I dabbled in palm os programming a while ago (I got to making hello world) anyways, they had this really great emulator that had a 'gremlins' feature that would basically randomly do all sorts of things to your app like press buttons keys etc. Is there something out there you guys use that does similar? I'm looking for mac os x 10.3.9, 10.4.9 and also linux x86, freebsd, ms windows all versions past 95 but I'd take any suggestions thanks!

Mainly I'd love to hear what somebody (1 person or so team) does (did) out there for their beta testing of a real in the wild app please!

[DoG]

As you have no other choice, your best bet is finding people on the net, either by posting an announcement to these forums, or finding people on irc/aim/whatever floats your boat. Of course, if you happen to have nearby friends with machines to test on, all the better.

If you're working on stuff for an embedded platform, emulators are of course handy, but smashing random keys on a Desktop OS doesn't really work for testing.

[maximile]

...they had this really great emulator that had a 'gremlins' feature that would basically randomly do all sorts of things to your app like press buttons keys etc.

Sounds similar to MonkeyLives (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Monkey_Lives.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=monkey). Not helpful to your situation of course, but an interesting read (as are most of the things on folklore.org (http://www.folklore.org/)).

[PowerMacX]

they had this really great emulator that had a 'gremlins' feature that would basically randomly do all sorts of things to your app like press buttons keys etc. Is there something out there you guys use that does similar?

I don't have one, but I heard that a cat + a keyboard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9YNhs-RSs4) can have that effect... :P

[mac_girl]

I don't have one, but I heard that a cat + a keyboard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9YNhs-RSs4) can have that effect... :P

ya, I know that one unfortunately =/

[macnib]

Ya, testing is difficult. The engineer/programmer can never completely know all the issues beforehand.

I'd say:

1. Test with close friends who have macs and are not programmers. Problem is not many people have macs.

2. Make sure you have a good lab at home with a wide range of hardware. x86/PPC etc. Try to have the different machine / video card combinations. Try to pick video cards that represent the market as much as possible. I vaguely recall in the past Apple has a lab for developers with all the different kinds of hardware.(?)

3. OpenGL Profiler has settings for different video cards. I think the list of cards has not been updated for a while. But I think this changes the limits in OpenGL. So, this might catch something.

4. Try to regression test as much as possible.

Make a matrix with major variables. For instance, two columns which are ppc and x86. Then 3 rows ati, nvidia and intel. Sad part is this matrix use to be 1x2 but now 2 x 3! I suppose one could even add another dimension to the matrix which is has shading capability or no shading capability. So, the platform is getting exponentially more complicated -- drives gamers to consoles.

Even with all these suggestions one might still be blind to issues. Sometimes just changing context and working on something else then coming back to a problem can solve the blindness issue.

[ChrisD]

Well
For al my testing I always recruited the kind of users I wanted through a web page like this or from a mac game site.

I basically sent out a press annoucement and asked for people to sign up and used them....

Quality of testers veries a lot.

But lets say I give away 200 copies of a game for testing...
Thats worth it to me or has been in the past.

Now to all that you can make your app expire at a certain date etc and or need regcodes for the testers.

I would actually start with offering the app to a small comunity like IDG :)