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Apple Acquires Canadian App Development Startup Buddybuild

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Apple recently purchased Vancouver-based app startup Buddybuild, according to a blog post on the Buddybuild website (via iMore).

Buddybuild's website describes the company as a "continuous integration, continuous deployment, and user feedback platform for development teams." In other words, Buddybuild offers tools for developers that are designed to let them quickly and easily build apps through GitHub, BitBucket, or GitLab.

buddybuildapple
The entire Buddybuild team will be joining the Xcode engineering group at Apple to "build amazing developer tools for the entire iOS community," with Buddybuild being rolled into Xcode itself.

Buddybuild will continue to operate out of Vancouver, Canada, and the Buddybuild service will remain available to existing customers for building, testing, and shipping iOS apps.

We're excited to share that the buddybuild team has joined the Xcode engineering group at Apple to build amazing developer tools for the entire iOS community.

We've always been proud to be a Canadian company, so we're also pleased that we will be staying right here in Vancouver -- a hotbed of developer and engineering talent.

Though the service will remain available for current customers, the company is no longer accepting new customers. Current free starter plans and Android app development tools will be discontinued on March 1, 2018 following the acquisition.

Tag: Apple Acquisition

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Top Rated Comments

eveluvsrainbows Avatar
eveluvsrainbows
112 months ago
RE: "Buddybuild offers tools for developers that are designed to let them quickly and easily build apps through GitHub, BitBucket, or GitLab."

Looks to be a VERY DUMB move on Apple's part ... another one they didn't think thru.

Simple apps will now be REPLICATED in the tens of thousands, instead of 100s or 1000s.

It will swamp their App Review teams, and clutter-up the iOS App Store even more so than it already is, which is basically just one BIG F!@#ing Mess !

My guess, Phil Schiller made the call on this one.
....I don't think you know how Buddybuild works.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
M
munna78
112 months ago
I don't think they will be there in a year or so. Apple just doesn't want employees to jump ship immediately. Give them time to plan the move to the space ship.

doubt it. apple still has a development site in Vancouver from a startup they picked up 10 years ago. I know a bunch of people that work there
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chucker23n1 Avatar
chucker23n1
112 months ago
Could this be related to the threat of shutdown to other generic app builders? Is Apple planning to create their own app authoring system for individuals or companies that want a cheap, simple, turnkey solution?
No. This is tooling to make engineering easier.

RE: "Buddybuild offers tools for developers that are designed to let them quickly and easily build apps through GitHub, BitBucket, or GitLab."

Looks to be a VERY DUMB move on Apple's part ... another one they didn't think thru.

Simple apps will now be REPLICATED in the tens of thousands, instead of 100s or 1000s.

It will swamp their App Review teams, and clutter-up the iOS App Store even more so than it already is, which is basically just one BIG F!@#ing Mess !

My guess, Phil Schiller made the call on this one.
My guess, you neither know much about Phil Schiller, who is quite competent, nor this company, whom the article described (consider reading it), nor software engineering.

I don't think they will be there in a year or so. Apple just doesn't want employees to jump ship immediately. Give them time to plan the move to the space ship.
Why? Apple has several Software teams outside Cupertino. iWork in Pittsburgh, for instance
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
diego Avatar
diego
112 months ago
Nice to hear that they will be staying in Vancouver!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
R
recoil80
112 months ago
Why not? Contrary to popular belief, many tech workers don't want to move to California. There are so many examples of companies leaving offices and expanding their presence in Canada because of this. Google and Fitbit come to mind.
And Vancouver is on the same timezone as SF, so managing a remote team is not really inconvenient.
They have people working from the EU and an R&D office in Israel so why not Canada?
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
R
Rkuda
112 months ago
Could this be related to the threat of shutdown to other generic app builders? Is Apple planning to create their own app authoring system for individuals or companies that want a cheap, simple, turnkey solution?
Apple isn't shutting down generic app builders, they will require apps built through a system like that to be submitted on developer accounts for each company though rather than all through a single developers account.

Also BuildBuddy is not some sort of template app creator, rather it's a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI / CD) system that helps automate building and distributing development builds.

Xcode 9 has some CI features via its Xcode Server component and I expect Xcode 10 to have an expanded feature set now that Apple has acquired this company.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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