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Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

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Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#51

Post by chrisnolet »

daveytea wrote: post #50
weiyin wrote: post #2

Hi, thanks for checking us out. We're happy to answer any questions in the comments. Some of you may be familiar with app.io's demo pages service which was discontinued in August. We loved using their service and we thought it'd be a blast building a replacement. Technologies used: node, socket.io, mongodb, html5 canvas

As previously the Head of BD at App.io, I applaud your efforts! Well done! Quite a few ways you can monetise, good luck! :)

Likewise!! Well done guys. Great to see you've grabbed the torch. Good luck and I look forward to following your progress.

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#52

Post by chrisnolet »

woogiee wrote: post #34
weiyin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh... oh boy. you're really pushing the boundaries of our testing... :)

not sure if you care about this one... http://i.imgur.com/OsGo10T.png

I think that's the Apple store in San Francisco ;)

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#53

Post by shortstuffsushi »

kaivi wrote: post #46

Well, this is cool, but Safari allows for loading basically any file located on the filesystem. For instance, trying file:///etc/passwd results in file found but can not be opened by Safari. That could be an attack vector.

Could you explain where you think the issue here is? Are you saying, as a user trying to upload, you could possibly (presumably accidentally) upload your passwd, or as a user of their site, you could somehow see their passwd file?

If it's the former, I think that's a 'vulnerability' with any site that has a file chooser.

If it's the latter, could you elaborate where and how you would do so? Perhaps you're saying you could load it through the simulator that's running on the actual computer/vm somewhere, but those simulator environment are sandboxes (afaik) so that you could only access files on within the simulator's context.

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#54

Post by viktorbenei »

vblord wrote: post #48

Just having the simulator isn't enough for us Xamarin developers. One big issue with Xamarin is that you need a mac (with xcode installed) on the network in order to do builds. If you could solve that issue along with the having the simulator online then you have my money.

Not ideal but you can use an iOS CI/CD / build automation service like Bitrise (http://www.bitrise.io/) (co-founder / CTO here) to do the builds for you. If the simulator service has an API you can even automate the connection with Bitrise.

There are a few online code compilers too like this Swift one (http://swiftstub.com/) to work with.

Certainly not ideal but probably not impossible.

P.S. at this time you're probably better with an OS X VPS.

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#57

Post by userbinator »

phoboslab wrote: post #4

This is really cool! The "video" quality is pretty bad though. From what I can see, the app streams base64 encoded JPEGs via WebSockets and draws them in a Canvas. The overhead of sending complete images costs a lot of bandwidth. You may want to look into jsmpeg for live streaming: https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg

base64 encoded JPEGs

MJPEG is supported in all browsers I know of, and would cut down on bandwidth by 33% over base64.

(If you really want to use WebSockets, a more dense encoding than base64 could also help - look into base85, for example.)

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#59

Post by niutech »

userbinator wrote: post #57
phoboslab wrote: post #4

This is really cool! The "video" quality is pretty bad though. From what I can see, the app streams base64 encoded JPEGs via WebSockets and draws them in a Canvas. The overhead of sending complete images costs a lot of bandwidth. You may want to look into jsmpeg for live streaming: https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg

base64 encoded JPEGs MJPEG is supported in all browsers I know of, and would cut down on bandwidth by 33% over base64. (If you really want to use WebSockets, a more dense encoding than base64 could also help - look into base85, for example.)

MJPEG is good, but keep in mind that Chrome doesn't support playback of MJPEG streams as a main resource, it has to be in an tag.

Re: Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#60

Post by gurkendoktor »

phmagic wrote: post #20

I'm not sure what problem this solves but it's technically cool.

You can let users play around with your paid app to see if it works as expected. Certainly cleaner than messing with In-App-Purchases or a separate "Lite" version of your app.

I've heard in one episode of the Core Intuition podcast that Panic has actually spent some time polishing a simulator build of Transmit(?) for iOS, for use with app.io (a service which did the same thing as the OP until they pivoted). This is something I'd also love to do if this business promises to survive longer than app.io did.

This is especially interesting if you are an iOS freelancer who wants to show off their work, without clients having to create accounts etc. :)

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