u/hameeedurrehman

There’s a lot of excitement around Google opening an office in Pakistan, but digging into the actual announcements paints a different picture.

The focus appears to be mainly on **government/policy collaboration, digital-skills programs, education, IT exports, and Chromebook initiatives** — not a Google engineering or R&D hub.

For example, the announced Chromebook facility could produce up to **500,000 devices annually**, and Google says its programs have trained **1+ million Pakistanis**.

That’s definitely positive for Pakistan’s tech ecosystem.

But there’s still **no public announcement of a major Google software engineering operation in Islamabad**.

So while this is good news, I think the “Google is opening an office in Islamabad” headlines are making it sound bigger than it actually is.

**Is this a meaningful first step toward a larger Google presence, or mainly a government/industry partnership?**

There’s a lot of excitement around Google opening an office in Pakistan, but digging into the actual announcements paints a different picture.

The focus appears to be mainly on government/policy collaboration, digital-skills programs, education, IT exports, and Chromebook initiatives — not a Google engineering or R&D hub.

For example, the announced Chromebook facility could produce up to 500,000 devices annually, and Google says its programs have trained 1+ million Pakistanis.

That’s definitely positive for Pakistan’s tech ecosystem.

But there’s still no public announcement of a major Google software engineering operation in Islamabad.

So while this is good news, I think the “Google is opening an office in Islamabad” headlines are making it sound bigger than it actually is.

Is this a meaningful first step toward a larger Google presence, or mainly a government/industry partnership?

Google opening an office in Islamabad is a big milestone, but from what’s been announced, it appears to be more focused on policy, government relations, and supporting the local digital ecosystem rather than software engineering.

The bigger impact could be indirect — stronger IT exports, digital initiatives, and more investment in Pakistan’s tech ecosystem.

Do you think this could eventually lead to Google expanding its engineering presence in Pakistan, or will the office remain primarily focused on policy and ecosystem development?

Kept mixing these up early on so wrote down the actual differences once I got both working properly.

TestFlight — no UDID collection, Apple reviews the build before it's live (can take a few hours), testers need the TestFlight app + an invite. Scales to 10k testers.

EAS Preview (Ad-Hoc) — you register tester UDIDs first (eas device:create or they scan a QR to self-register), then eas build --platform ios --profile preview. Install is instant via link/QR, no App Store account needed. But you're capped around 100 devices/year on a standard Apple Developer account.

Ended up using Ad-Hoc for day-to-day dev testing (way faster feedback loop) and TestFlight once a build's stable enough to hand to a wider group. Anyone doing it differently?

https://preview.redd.it/agz2k0a8avih1.jpg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b564b68362bfdda08d1b7cccdf91daea57c6bdd