Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#21

Post by beatpanda » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:06 PM UTC

-1 for forcing me to use the Mac App Store — the copy on the landing page you sent me to made it sound like there was a way to download it directly. Before I could download it I was presented with multiple alerts and pages of bullshit regarding my Apple ID and the App Store terms of service. Not a good experience.

-1 for not having a link to create a new account from the first dialogue box in the app. I can either log in or start without an account, but not create a new one? There's also no hint as to where I should go to make a new account. I clicked "forgot key" and worked it out from there.

-1 for not explaining the "open source" plan very well. What does "public" mean? Does that mean anybody can watch videos of whatever I'm working on?

-1 for making the credentials I actually need to use the app non-obvious. You should know that I'm coming from your app when I sign up for a new account, and when I'm done signing up, show me my account key in big, fat, auto-copyable text, instead of hiding it two screens later.

-1 for not automatically taking me to my localhost URL after Sauce Connect initializes. I had to say I wanted to go to a localhost URL, wait for Sauce Connect to initialize, and then try to connect to the URL again.

But once I got the thing working, it's really great! And I totally forgot that display:inline-block didn't work as recently as IE7 :(

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#22

Post by toyg » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:06 PM UTC

highwind wrote: post #14

kyrra wrote: post #6

I was a bit worried about how this would work on a company intranet. I know my IT network security people are pretty paranoid about bridge networks and all that. Looking at Sauce Connect[1], they recommend to put the service on a dedicated machine on your intranet that you can zone off so it only has access to the parts of the network you want to allow. Seems like a decent solution to allow a running a cloud service…

Still. I feel like the price is way too much. The recommended plan is $149/month. For the long run, buying a decent machine and running your own virtual machines would be cheaper. Someone prove me wrong.

Your own VMs have to be created, stored and maintained. For small shops, managing even a relatively small catalogs of images can be quite a time-consuming process, let alone building multiple automated test processes.

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#23

Post by undershirt » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:11 PM UTC

I would like to see this for Nintendo Wii-U's HTML5-compliant browser.

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#24

Post by tedmiston » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:11 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #22

highwind wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. I feel like the price is way too much. The recommended plan is $149/month. For the long run, buying a decent machine and running your own virtual machines would be cheaper. Someone prove me wrong.

Your own VMs have to be created, stored and maintained. For small shops, managing even a relatively small catalogs of images can be quite a time-consuming process, let alone building multiple automated test processes.

No one said you need to test every browser. I mean, pragmatically speaking, basically you need to test the major versions of IE on Windows if you're already on a Mac.

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#25

Post by johns » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:21 PM UTC

awilson820 wrote: post #18

highwind wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. I feel like the price is way too much. The recommended plan is $149/month. For the long run, buying a decent machine and running your own virtual machines would be cheaper. Someone prove me wrong.

What you're seeing is actually pricing for our automated testing service. Sauce for Mac is either free (30 mins of testing/mo) or $12/mo (for unlimited minutes against all browsers). It also comes included with all the testing plans on that page.

This needs to be clarified on sauceio.com/mac. It's very confusing right now to go to pricing and not understand what it's for.

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#26

Post by netfire » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:30 PM UTC

I like the concept but the product doesn't seem to work well (at least the free version), perhaps due to HN traffic. I can't connect to most websites and the ones I can connect to take a long time.

As for your website, I agree with some of the other comments. Its not really obvious that you have a free plan or what that offers unless you read closely. I'd suggest you move that up into your pricing grid.

I'd also move the Sauce with Mouse row up to the top. I see your main value for users (or at least starting point) being manual testing. Focus less on automating and scaling up to huge numbers of tests. Get me in the door and familiar with the product, then upsell me once I'm convinced your product is awesome.

Best of luck to you. I'll check back in a few days to see if things are working better.

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#27

Post by EGreg » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:35 PM UTC

This is excellent! How does this compare against BrowserStack (ignoring price, of course)

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#28

Post by durin42 » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:35 PM UTC

highwind wrote: post #14

kyrra wrote: post #6

I was a bit worried about how this would work on a company intranet. I know my IT network security people are pretty paranoid about bridge networks and all that. Looking at Sauce Connect[1], they recommend to put the service on a dedicated machine on your intranet that you can zone off so it only has access to the parts of the network you want to allow. Seems like a decent solution to allow a running a cloud service…

Still. I feel like the price is way too much. The recommended plan is $149/month. For the long run, buying a decent machine and running your own virtual machines would be cheaper. Someone prove me wrong.

Maintaining selenium testing infrastructure is hell. Absolute hell. Sauce means you're not wasting time on that. I've watched people at both of my companies blow TONS of time on this, for relatively little results.

(Disclaimer: some of my friends work at Sauce.)

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#29

Post by beatpanda » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:36 PM UTC

beatpanda wrote: post #21

-1 for forcing me to use the Mac App Store — the copy on the landing page you sent me to made it sound like there was a way to download it directly. Before I could download it I was presented with multiple alerts and pages of bullshit regarding my Apple ID and the App Store terms of service. Not a good experience. -1 for not having a link to create a new account from the first dialogue box in the app. I can either lo…

Folks, this website is not called "internet love fest". Please stop downvoting me for giving honest and complete feedback of my experience with the app.

Re: Launch any browser/OS right from your desktop with Sauce for Mac

#30

Post by ek » Thu, Dec 06, 2012, 11:42 PM UTC

Sauce does Mac OS X virtualization using some patches Alexander Graf and René Rebe helped them bring up to date, which they've released (see http://sauceio.com/index.php/2012/08/apple-sauce-android-sau...).

I tried hacking their patches into a recent snapshot of the KVM tree but there were some issues. I sort of wonder if anyone else has managed to get their code working, because it would be a neat hack if so.