Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser

#1

Post by weiyin » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

Show HN: Run dedicated iOS Simulators in the browser
appetize.io

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

#2

Post by weiyin » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 3:28 PM UTC

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

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

#3

Post by MichaelApproved » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 3:49 PM UTC

More information about what the site does would be helpful. Also, I get this error on Firefox/Windows "no video with supported format and mime type found"

Edit: also click on the demo and saw the simulator but couldn't get it to do anything. What is supposed to happen in the simulator? Should I be able to click on something? Any instructions/information would be helpful. Right now you're assuming everyone knows what the site is about and what the simulator is supposed to do.

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

#4

Post by phoboslab » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 3:56 PM UTC

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

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

#5

Post by tuscany » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 3:58 PM UTC

Running an iOS simulator in the browser is different from using a browser to connect to an iOS simulator on a server. That said, this is still cool!

My only question is how you're going to combat abuse. You're basically providing free servers in the demo. The economics of doing that means no amount of captcha will save you (it's been tried many times).

Even if you don't provide a demo and charge for simulating, you're buying into a whole new problem of metering while maintaining a sane price. Comments?

That said, congratulations on shipping working software!

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

#6

Post by weiyin » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

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

Thanks for the suggestion, that looks like a cool library. A future goal is to be able to provide higher resolution images to fully show off the high DPI displays.

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

#7

Post by ironcrucible » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #3

More information about what the site does would be helpful. Also, I get this error on Firefox/Windows "no video with supported format and mime type found" Edit: also click on the demo and saw the simulator but couldn't get it to do anything. What is supposed to happen in the simulator? Should I be able to click on something? Any instructions/information would be helpful. Right now you're assuming everyone knows what…

I had the same issue, using Firefox 33 on Windows 8.1. It looks like switching to Chrome fixed the demo. Would be nice to have some sort of notice that certain browsers aren't supported (if that's the case).

Also, fonts are rendering poorly in Firefox and Chrome [0]. Bumping the font-weight up to at least 400 makes the text much more legible.

[0]: http://imgur.com/2wVXvUr

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

#8

Post by weiyin » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #3

More information about what the site does would be helpful. Also, I get this error on Firefox/Windows "no video with supported format and mime type found" Edit: also click on the demo and saw the simulator but couldn't get it to do anything. What is supposed to happen in the simulator? Should I be able to click on something? Any instructions/information would be helpful. Right now you're assuming everyone knows what…

Hi Michael.

Thanks for taking a look! And sorry our site is having some problems on Firefox. Maybe use Chrome for now until we fix it up.

This service we put together would allow anybody to run iOS simulators in the browser for a whole variety of reasons. For example, a developer can easily send builds to clients/colleagues or even embed the demo in a website or blog post.

Cheers, Weiyin

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

#9

Post by kolencherry » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

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

Why not use WebRTC for streaming the video?

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

#10

Post by weiyin » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

tuscany wrote: post #5

Running an iOS simulator in the browser is different from using a browser to connect to an iOS simulator on a server. That said, this is still cool! My only question is how you're going to combat abuse. You're basically providing free servers in the demo. The economics of doing that means no amount of captcha will save you (it's been tried many times). Even if you don't provide a demo and charge for simulating, you'r…

hi tuscany,

all solid points, and thanks for your support.

we will definitely need to think through abuse, server costs, etc. it's a pretty lean setup but still gotta run on mac hardware :)

weiyin