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Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

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41–50 of 108 posts

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#41

The US$19.99 price is a bit steep to buy sight-unseen. That's more of an App Store problem than Blink's fault. Obviously the price is fine if it works better than Prompt.

I'm not so sure I'd say that's an App Store problem. There are ways around requiring purchases sight-unseen. Unless I'm mistaken, you can have a 'lite' version as a separate app, or you can have in-app purchases to unlock the full version.

(Don't get me wrong, though... I think the price point is fine.)

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#43
post #39

Two things I'd like to see: 1) Support for 1Password import of private keys 2) Support for the Citrix X1 Mouse: http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930 (Yes, terminals are more useful with mice too :))

Thanks for the suggestions! I will definitely consider 1Password in the future, although not a fan of reusing private keys everywhere :)

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#44
post #39

Two things I'd like to see: 1) Support for 1Password import of private keys 2) Support for the Citrix X1 Mouse: http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930 (Yes, terminals are more useful with mice too :))

Thanks for the suggestions! I will definitely consider 1Password in the future, although not a fan of reusing private keys everywhere :)

I use it for both passwords and pubkeys (some boxes use OTP, too)

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#45
post #39

Two things I'd like to see: 1) Support for 1Password import of private keys 2) Support for the Citrix X1 Mouse: http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930 (Yes, terminals are more useful with mice too :))

Thanks for the suggestions! I will definitely consider 1Password in the future, although not a fan of reusing private keys everywhere :)

1Password is not necessarily for reusing keys, it's just very usual way to transfer private things to mobile devices :)

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#46

How does it compare to Panic's Prompt?

Three things: - Mosh & SSH support: In Prompt and any other iOS ssh client, connections break every 3 minutes. With Mosh that isn't a problem. - Full external keyboard support: Alt as Esc, Caps as Ctrl, you can have your terminal as you do in your desktop/laptop. - Speed and rendering: Blink uses Google's HTerm, so it is faster and you can add your own themes and fonts.

Interesting that you use hterm to power this. Does that mean you start a WebView. Or do you somehow have a virtual dom of sorts that renders to Obj-c view (a la react-native)?

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#47

Does anyone know if I have the option to import and SSH private key and whether or not that data is stored in the secure enclave? If so this would be very valuable for working on the go, but I'm very weary of the security if it will be used for work. I'd love to see some documentation regarding he security, and some proof that keys are not exportable.

It allows to import an SSH key. When doing that, the public key is stored in disc, and the private key is sent to Keychain (since iOS 7 or 8 encrypted with the Secure Enclave), and only a reference is stored. In this way keys are not exportable or sent to the backup. We use UICKeyChainStore for that, and can check the code yourself too :)

Slick!

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#48
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three things: - Mosh & SSH support: In Prompt and any other iOS ssh client, connections break every 3 minutes. With Mosh that isn't a problem. - Full external keyboard support: Alt as Esc, Caps as Ctrl, you can have your terminal as you do in your desktop/laptop. - Speed and rendering: Blink uses Google's HTerm, so it is faster and you can add your own themes and fonts.

Interesting that you use hterm to power this. Does that mean you start a WebView. Or do you somehow have a virtual dom of sorts that renders to Obj-c view (a la react-native)?

It is a WKWebView, and the way SSH or Mosh are connected is by just a simple descriptors system on top of it so that read and write operations can be done. So everything is really "unixy", you can send fprintf to the terminal, etc...

It proved to be fast enough, and it is still faster than anything else. I'm considering if building on top of HyperTerm at some point would be doable too :)

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#49
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that you use hterm to power this. Does that mean you start a WebView. Or do you somehow have a virtual dom of sorts that renders to Obj-c view (a la react-native)?

It is a WKWebView, and the way SSH or Mosh are connected is by just a simple descriptors system on top of it so that read and write operations can be done. So everything is really "unixy", you can send fprintf to the terminal, etc... It proved to be fast enough, and it is still faster than anything else. I'm considering if building on top of HyperTerm at some point would be doable too :)

That would be awesome. There is already quite a community that sprung up around hyperterm.

Re: Show HN: Blink Shell for iOS, an Open-Source, Mosh and SSH Terminal for Pros

#50
post #40
post #20

$31?!

Well, $20 USD. Not sure what $ you mean. If you aren't SSHing to boxes from a mobile device often enough that $20 doesn't seem worth it, then this likely isn't for you. I for one would pay that at the drop of a hat if I only had a cell phone and my servers were down. It's certainly not much for an everyday productivity tool.

I'm not "knocking" this app by any means. Just from the comments here, it's obviously a great tool for a lot of people.

> ... if I only had a cell phone and my servers were down.

I just use my cellphone as a hotspot, my MBP connects to it, and I'm online. Several of my co-workers do the same thing. Is that uncommon? I kinda just assumed that's what most people do (assuming they have a laptop with them, of course).

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