6 ms·

I just want a cheap way to live debug sites in Safari / Safari Mobile without being forced to purchase Apple hardware. Only reasonable option I've come across

by Lorin 5y ago

I just want a cheap way to live debug sites in Safari / Safari Mobile without being forced to purchase Apple hardware. Only reasonable option I've come across so far is buying used hardware. VM under Win10/AMD seems like a PITA.

packetslave 5y ago
Remember that running OS X (including in a VM) on anything other than Apple hardware is technically a violation of Apple's terms of service. If you're just doing it for personal use, this probably isn't a big deal. If you're doing it for your business, make sure you consider the risks.
intrasight 5y ago
Used totally makes sense. I picked up a Mac Mini with a 27" monitor for $500.
- barney54 5y ago
  The M1 Mac Mini recently was only $600 on sale.
  - treesknees 5y ago
    You can also find a refurbished M1 Mac Mini for under $600 on Apple's refurbished store.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  It's a shame that web developers have to spend $500 to buy a bespoke web-browsing machine just to make their sites work better with Apple hardware. If Apple wanted people to treat their browser seriously, they should have simulators and developer tooling to spare.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    or just release safari cross-platform.
    - derefr 5y ago
      Safari (not WebKit specifically; the rest of the browser) relies on OS libraries. Those libraries would have to be reimplemented for other OSes. I don't mean that that would be an impediment to porting; Apple have done this before—Safari 5 was available for Windows. (And interestingly, vice-versa, IE5 was available for macOS!) What I mean is that the differences in implementation of these OS libraries would mean that this version of Safari wouldn't be bug-for-bug compatible with macOS Safari; and therefore, testing on this version of Safari wouldn't necessarily get you what you want, if your goal is finding and squashing 100% of the bugs that testing on macOS Safari would allow you to find and squash. To use a pretty close analogy, it would be like a development workflow for Windows executable that involved running them under Wine in Linux, and never actually under Windows. You've QAed for the API surface, sure; but you haven't actually QAed the software for how Microsoft's own library implementations work (and the bugs that those implementations introduce.)
      - acoard 5y ago
        You're not wrong, but in practice I'd imagine >99% of bugs are in the rendering / webkit layer, not in the OS integration layer. Sure, if you're making a plugin that plays with bookmarks or 'Read Later', you'd likely run afoul of the issues you mention. But most web devs are concerned just about browser compatibility of rendering their web-app. In this context, as long as web page rendering and JS engine is identical between OS' it's fine.
        derefr 5y ago
        Rendering issues are OS issues too. For example, Safari's font rendering depends on the particulars of macOS/iOS's font-rendering framework. Safari on Windows would presumably use Windows' font-rendering framework, with drastically different results, due to the different frameworks supporting different subsets of e.g. ligature-pair width hinting or hyphenation, thereby causing text to wrap in different places, such that the layout at a given font size + viewport size on Windows wouldn't be predictive of the layout at the same font size + viewport size on macOS. (Which is not even to mention the fonts you'd have by default on Windows and not by default on macOS, that would interfere with the font family cascade, and yet couldn't be suppressed from the cascade because some macOS systems do have them.) Or, for that matter, there could be certain exposed -webkit CSS selectors that are really just features of some or another macOS rendering-layer framework, with no Windows equivalent — the same way that IE's ancient CSS "filters" were really just exposed DirectX features (e.g. filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.blur). For these cases, testing on "Safari on Windows" would essentially just get you what testing in Chrome on Windows already gets you (unless Apple created an entire software renderer that brings in all of macOS's Quartz and all its subsidiary libraries as a big ol' polyfill.) The point at which Safari is guaranteed to work like it does on macOS, is the point at which you're bringing in a polyfill consisting of 99% of macOS's frameworks. May as well bring in the last 1% as well, and call it a VM. (Ideally a thin-as-possible paravirtualized VM where the display driver is written to directly make DirectX calls, etc. — but VM client software is already pretty good at providing these sorts of drivers.)
  - syshum 5y ago
    Apple does not believe there are any electronics out side of Apple, nor that there are any web browsers outside of Safari. Apple believe everyone on the plant should only ever use Apple hardware, and Apple Software, why would anyone not want to run over priced low quality products?
    - vxNsr 5y ago
      Meanwhile the CEO uses a windows machine with outlook.
      - maddyboo 5y ago
        Source?
      - mrweasel 5y ago
        What? Tim Cook use Windows?
        extrememacaroni 5y ago
        BIG if true :O
      - joshgachnang 5y ago
        I'd love a source on that.
        vxNsr 5y ago
        The guy who wrote the book about the making of the iphone sent a bunch of emails to tim cook with tracking enabled and each time it was opened by a windows device. other comments in this thread have more links the story.
        hulitu 5y ago
        Seems a very good idea from a security POV. You get an email and your favourite Email program will be more than happy to open the link and execute the code. And because this is the CEO of Apple, you presume that he is using MacOSX and send him an Apple executable. Which will not run on a windows machine. Now, ransomware on the other way ...
pixelcoins 5y ago
Why not Browserstack?
- G3rn0ti 5y ago
  Debugging iOS-Safari issues on a web page requires: 1) Access to a Desktop Mac and a Desktop Safari. 2) An iOS device. The Safari debugger recognizes a plugged-in iOS device and then allows to debug the iOS safari remotely. That's the only reliable way to find iOS specific JS or CSS issues. Browserstack alone does not help, unfortunately AFAIR.
  - jamroom 5y ago
    You actually don't need the iOS device - Safari will also link up to the iOS simulator, so you can do this with just XCode.
    - G3rn0ti 5y ago
      But XCode is MacOS only, isn’t it?
  - presentation 5y ago
    You can try Lambdatest. https://www.lambdatest.com/feature https://www.lambdatest.com/feature
33degrees 5y ago
Does browserstack not work for you?
pmarreck 5y ago
I have a macOS VM under VMWare running on Windows. It wasn't that difficult, found some guides online by googling obvious search words. The only thing I haven't gotten to work yet is the App Store, but I saw a guide for that, just haven't done it yet. You won't get graphics acceleration btw, but CPU performance is fine. I believe the trickiest bit was running a macOS serial generation app and copying that value into the VM settings. (I've purchased plenty of Macs over the years so pls Apple, this is just for dev purposes!)
- rdsnsca 5y ago
  Enjoy it while it last, in 3 or 4 years Apple will drop Intel macOS support.
  - disiplus 5y ago
    3 or 4 years. sure not, they still sell intel macs on the website.
  - pmarreck 5y ago
    By then, Windows 11+ will have moved onto ARM and whatever cross binary solution Microsoft is working on should be complete. Also, with emulation/virtualization, it's still perfectly feasible
    - hulitu 5y ago
      I don't want to destroy your hope but take a look at ARM support in linux. (TL;DR the ARM space is very fragmented so taking a running system from one machine with ARM to another is not possible).
      - pmarreck 5y ago
        Fortunately, Linux lets you install things by compiling them locally instead of just auto-downloading a binary. Are you saying that "aarch64" binaries don't run on all ARM chips?
btian 5y ago
You can rent from Amazon for $1/hour It supports remote desktop and everything you would need
- amarshall 5y ago
  Sort of as there is a minimum of 24-hours. > Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement.
  - swebs 5y ago
    Do those 24 hours need to be continuous?
    - schiederme 5y ago
      Yes. It’s in the MacOS ToS.
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        But... why?
        hulitu 5y ago
        So you get the full Apple MacOSX experience.
- Aea 5y ago
  You can rent from Amazon for $25.99 a day and then for $1.083 an hour after your one day minumum. > Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    Maybe say you have to pay for at least 1 whole day every time.
password4321 5y ago
Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11/macOS/Linux on Linux https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797129 404 points by nixcraft 11 days ago | 117 comments

by Lorin 5y ago

packetslave 5y ago

Remember that running OS X (including in a VM) on anything other than Apple hardware is technically a violation of Apple's terms of service. If you're just doing it for personal use, this probably isn't a big deal. If you're doing it for your business, make sure you consider the risks.

intrasight 5y ago

Used totally makes sense. I picked up a Mac Mini with a 27" monitor for $500.

barney54 5y ago
The M1 Mac Mini recently was only $600 on sale.
- treesknees 5y ago
  You can also find a refurbished M1 Mac Mini for under $600 on Apple's refurbished store.
smoldesu 5y ago
It's a shame that web developers have to spend $500 to buy a bespoke web-browsing machine just to make their sites work better with Apple hardware. If Apple wanted people to treat their browser seriously, they should have simulators and developer tooling to spare.
- asddubs 5y ago
  or just release safari cross-platform.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Safari (not WebKit specifically; the rest of the browser) relies on OS libraries. Those libraries would have to be reimplemented for other OSes. I don't mean that that would be an impediment to porting; Apple have done this before—Safari 5 was available for Windows. (And interestingly, vice-versa, IE5 was available for macOS!) What I mean is that the differences in implementation of these OS libraries would mean that this version of Safari wouldn't be bug-for-bug compatible with macOS Safari; and therefore, testing on this version of Safari wouldn't necessarily get you what you want, if your goal is finding and squashing 100% of the bugs that testing on macOS Safari would allow you to find and squash. To use a pretty close analogy, it would be like a development workflow for Windows executable that involved running them under Wine in Linux, and never actually under Windows. You've QAed for the API surface, sure; but you haven't actually QAed the software for how Microsoft's own library implementations work (and the bugs that those implementations introduce.)
    - acoard 5y ago
      You're not wrong, but in practice I'd imagine >99% of bugs are in the rendering / webkit layer, not in the OS integration layer. Sure, if you're making a plugin that plays with bookmarks or 'Read Later', you'd likely run afoul of the issues you mention. But most web devs are concerned just about browser compatibility of rendering their web-app. In this context, as long as web page rendering and JS engine is identical between OS' it's fine.
      - derefr 5y ago
        Rendering issues are OS issues too. For example, Safari's font rendering depends on the particulars of macOS/iOS's font-rendering framework. Safari on Windows would presumably use Windows' font-rendering framework, with drastically different results, due to the different frameworks supporting different subsets of e.g. ligature-pair width hinting or hyphenation, thereby causing text to wrap in different places, such that the layout at a given font size + viewport size on Windows wouldn't be predictive of the layout at the same font size + viewport size on macOS. (Which is not even to mention the fonts you'd have by default on Windows and not by default on macOS, that would interfere with the font family cascade, and yet couldn't be suppressed from the cascade because some macOS systems do have them.) Or, for that matter, there could be certain exposed -webkit CSS selectors that are really just features of some or another macOS rendering-layer framework, with no Windows equivalent — the same way that IE's ancient CSS "filters" were really just exposed DirectX features (e.g. filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.blur). For these cases, testing on "Safari on Windows" would essentially just get you what testing in Chrome on Windows already gets you (unless Apple created an entire software renderer that brings in all of macOS's Quartz and all its subsidiary libraries as a big ol' polyfill.) The point at which Safari is guaranteed to work like it does on macOS, is the point at which you're bringing in a polyfill consisting of 99% of macOS's frameworks. May as well bring in the last 1% as well, and call it a VM. (Ideally a thin-as-possible paravirtualized VM where the display driver is written to directly make DirectX calls, etc. — but VM client software is already pretty good at providing these sorts of drivers.)
- syshum 5y ago
  Apple does not believe there are any electronics out side of Apple, nor that there are any web browsers outside of Safari. Apple believe everyone on the plant should only ever use Apple hardware, and Apple Software, why would anyone not want to run over priced low quality products?
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    Meanwhile the CEO uses a windows machine with outlook.
    - maddyboo 5y ago
      Source?
    - mrweasel 5y ago
      What? Tim Cook use Windows?
      - extrememacaroni 5y ago
        BIG if true :O
    - joshgachnang 5y ago
      I'd love a source on that.
      - vxNsr 5y ago
        The guy who wrote the book about the making of the iphone sent a bunch of emails to tim cook with tracking enabled and each time it was opened by a windows device. other comments in this thread have more links the story.
        hulitu 5y ago
        Seems a very good idea from a security POV. You get an email and your favourite Email program will be more than happy to open the link and execute the code. And because this is the CEO of Apple, you presume that he is using MacOSX and send him an Apple executable. Which will not run on a windows machine. Now, ransomware on the other way ...

pixelcoins 5y ago

Why not Browserstack?

G3rn0ti 5y ago
Debugging iOS-Safari issues on a web page requires: 1) Access to a Desktop Mac and a Desktop Safari. 2) An iOS device. The Safari debugger recognizes a plugged-in iOS device and then allows to debug the iOS safari remotely. That's the only reliable way to find iOS specific JS or CSS issues. Browserstack alone does not help, unfortunately AFAIR.
- jamroom 5y ago
  You actually don't need the iOS device - Safari will also link up to the iOS simulator, so you can do this with just XCode.
  - G3rn0ti 5y ago
    But XCode is MacOS only, isn’t it?
- presentation 5y ago
  You can try Lambdatest. https://www.lambdatest.com/feature https://www.lambdatest.com/feature

33degrees 5y ago

Does browserstack not work for you?

pmarreck 5y ago

I have a macOS VM under VMWare running on Windows. It wasn't that difficult, found some guides online by googling obvious search words. The only thing I haven't gotten to work yet is the App Store, but I saw a guide for that, just haven't done it yet. You won't get graphics acceleration btw, but CPU performance is fine. I believe the trickiest bit was running a macOS serial generation app and copying that value into the VM settings. (I've purchased plenty of Macs over the years so pls Apple, this is just for dev purposes!)

rdsnsca 5y ago
Enjoy it while it last, in 3 or 4 years Apple will drop Intel macOS support.
- disiplus 5y ago
  3 or 4 years. sure not, they still sell intel macs on the website.
- pmarreck 5y ago
  By then, Windows 11+ will have moved onto ARM and whatever cross binary solution Microsoft is working on should be complete. Also, with emulation/virtualization, it's still perfectly feasible
  - hulitu 5y ago
    I don't want to destroy your hope but take a look at ARM support in linux. (TL;DR the ARM space is very fragmented so taking a running system from one machine with ARM to another is not possible).
    - pmarreck 5y ago
      Fortunately, Linux lets you install things by compiling them locally instead of just auto-downloading a binary. Are you saying that "aarch64" binaries don't run on all ARM chips?

btian 5y ago

You can rent from Amazon for $1/hour It supports remote desktop and everything you would need

amarshall 5y ago
Sort of as there is a minimum of 24-hours. > Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement.
- swebs 5y ago
  Do those 24 hours need to be continuous?
  - schiederme 5y ago
    Yes. It’s in the MacOS ToS.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      But... why?
      - hulitu 5y ago
        So you get the full Apple MacOSX experience.
Aea 5y ago
You can rent from Amazon for $25.99 a day and then for $1.083 an hour after your one day minumum. > Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Maybe say you have to pay for at least 1 whole day every time.

password4321 5y ago

Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Win-10,11/macOS/Linux on Linux https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797129 404 points by nixcraft 11 days ago | 117 comments