Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.

Post by nevinera » Thu, Apr 14, 2011, 11:11 PM UTC

jws wrote: post #110

krakensden wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> really? I need to sort through 32 terminal emulators to use ssh on my Debian machine? Really? Unless you installed debian-minimal, and installed the gui piecemeal from there, your system came with a terminal emulator (gnome-terminal or kterm) in a nice menu, which will work perfectly as soon as you type 'ssh myserver.tld'. Besides, it's not like Prompt is the only terminal emulator/ssh client available on the app s…

Really? – yes. Normally I go with the defaults, but on my netbook for linux work on the road I didn't want to lose a lot of screen real estate to menu bars and window ornaments. Honestly I was only using X because the dark blue on black text in some emacs coloration was illegible, but fixing the console to get dark blue far enough off of black to be legible eluded me. I nearly got there with 'slim' and 'awesome' and…

Post by devinfoley » Thu, Apr 14, 2011, 11:14 PM UTC

rflrob wrote: post #58

ugh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a good SSH client for touchscreen devices is hard. Touchscreen devices have limited screen real estate and non-standard (read: limited) keyboards. As to the language: Clean and crisp say both pretty much the same thing in that sentence, crisp is only along for the alliteration (as is cheerful). My Latin teacher would be delighted. It's marketing, but it also makes sense. Not all apps are created equal, even if…

> It's more about selling you the keyboard (a suitable keyboard for SSH clients doesn't come standard with touchscreen devices) than about selling you the client. If that's the case, why not mention it a bit more in the post? I agree that a good keyboard layout is important, but the closest they come is saying "customizable special keys". I like iSSH's ability to do a semi-transparent overlay keyboard to maximize scr…

Post by exogen » Thu, Apr 14, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #97

statictype wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're pointing out is a quality of the Mac community, which has a certain amount of overlap with the iOS community. In this particular case, the company - Panic - is a highly regarded indie Mac developer so the copy reads like how it would for Mac apps. Many Mac users geek out on user interfaces that are sparse and simple and uncluttered - this is the audience to which this SSH client is pandering so it's no su…

Be that as it may, but, uh...... When I PuTTY into a Linux box or, on a linux box, type "ssh me@sweetbox", I don't see any clutter. It's pretty sparse and simple - just a brief prompt and a blinking cursor. I don't even know how it could become more than that... I think it speaks volumes about the progress of iOS apps (and iOS in general) towards being a usable computer that a SSH client is exciting.

Post by freerobby » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 12:13 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #22

freerobby wrote: post #10

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Agree, but iSSH is also crammed with helpful features like public key authentication. Prompt is going to have to match those to become a favorite of the hacker crowd.

Prompt does have public key authentication.

Post by sigil » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 1:21 AM UTC

mryall wrote: post #104

sigil wrote: post #78

Does anyone else have a major problem with the idea of using a closed-source SSH client? Even if it is App Store reviewed, I just can't bring myself to type production passwords into such a thing. For this reason, and because I'd also like an on-the-go SSH client setup that works on other devices, it would be great to see a browser based terminal emulator and pty muxer like ajaxterm [1] really take off. It's almost t…

Even in your preferred case, you're typing your passwords into a closed source browser on a closed source OS. You have to trust someone at some point. Panic also seems to be a quite reputable company. They've been in the Mac software business for a long time.