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With this, would it finally be possible to test iOS apps without having to first buy into the Apple ecosystem? Seems super helpful for developers, security test
by lucb1e 5y ago
With this, would it finally be possible to test iOS apps without having to first buy into the Apple ecosystem? Seems super helpful for developers, security testing, etc.
- smackeyacky 5y agoYou can semi not buy into the apple ecosystem at the moment. Purchase a 2nd hand iphone and then run this Docker based OSX system: https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX It's fine for personal projects using something like usbfluxd to talk to your iphone from the docker container. I wouldn't rely on it to do commercial work.
- chrismorgan 5y agoThe cheapest second hand iPhones that run the current version of iOS (but are right at the tail of any support) are on the high side of the price range of what I’ve ever spent on a new, primary phone that I expect to last me at least several years. (And although it’s not as common as the alternative, I’m hardly alone in not spending much on phones; now laptops, on the other hand—.) I don’t want to spend more on a device that I might use once every few months.
- jjcon 5y agoIf you don't daily drive an iPhone and you don't want to buy into Apples ecosystem, why do you want to develop for their ecosystem (which of course requires $100 a year to do so)? Genuinely curious cause I see a lot of people with this sentiment, is it for work related purposes or something? Or testing of web work potentially?
- chrismorgan 5y agoFor myself, it’s mostly web stuff with Safari and Safari on iOS that I’d really like to be able to test from time to time.
- exikyut 5y agoThen macOS + Xcode + simulator would probably be the most cost-effective solution. *(Small glance at QEMU)*
- chrismorgan 5y agoYeah, because I can’t use macOS without violating its EULA or forking out even more hundreds of dollars for a Mac Mini. :-(
- kingcharles 5y agoThere's a ton of companies out there who have real iPhones, iPads etc you can rent by the minute through a web browser to test your code or web sites. i.e. https://www.browserstack.com/test-on-iphone https://www.browserstack.com/test-on-iphone I'm just trying to find the one I use to test my emoji stuff, since Safari is the only one that displays emoji domains correctly.
- simion314 5y agoBrowser stack did not had the betas or the just released Safari versions, we had to depend on someone in our team risking upgrading to latest OSX to be able to debug with just released Safari that broke WebGL on desktop too. We do not target mobile users, we are fixing any bugs reported for Safari that are our code , but we only daily test with Firefox and Chrome because the developers and testers are using Windows or Linux(the team is in Europe)
- gman83 5y agoI have some sideproject apps that I built with Flutter that I use on my Android phone, and I would make them available on iOS if I didn't have to pay any money to do so.
- scarface74 5y agoSo the question is why would I as a consumer want to buy a least common denominator app using a cross platform framework that wasn’t actually tested on real hardware?
- lucb1e 5y agoYou can always uninstall it if it's crap right? It would be available to you as a choice, and now it's simply not available.
- kitsunesoba 5y agoIf the App Store becomes full of “checkbox ports” it’s going to be even more difficult to navigate than it already is. Part of that is on Apple for not investing more in discovery, but copious numbers of low effort ports isn’t a good thing to have anyway. In the game world, bad ports of console games to PC and bad ports of games from any other platform to the Switch are one of the most consistent gripes — quite often the sentiment surrounding them is that they’d be better off not existing.
- borland 5y agoThe app store has been full of "checkbox ports" since about 6 months after it launched
- freedomben 5y agoYou're showing your cards as an android person ;-) I agree with you, but nearly everyone on apple products will not. I get a (too me very perplexing) very similar respose when I ask things like, "why would it hurt people who want an Apple curated app store experience to allow a buried setting in the settings menu that allows sideloading for the few people who want that?"
- mattl 5y agoAn iPhone SE 1st Generation can be had for around $70. What phones are you buying?
- chrismorgan 5y agoOK, I was looking at iPhone 6S, a glance at eBay Australia suggests they’re starting somewhere around AUD150. iPhone SE 1st generation looks to be starting at more like AUD120. I spent around AUD150 on each of my first two phones. Last year I splurged on a PinePhone (around AUD300 including dock and shipping) which I hope will last me for the next decade.
- rrdharan 5y ago> Last year I splurged on a PinePhone (around AUD300 including dock and shipping) which I hope will last me for the next decade. I’m admittedly a pessimist but I’d personally be quite shocked if that happened. I simply lack faith that a small company can make a phone form factor device that can last / survive with that kind of lifetime. Building devices of this complexity that can actually last seems quite hard. Happy to be proven wrong!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jychang 5y agoYou can buy a used SE (2020) for only about $150 and that'll probably be supported for another 4 years. I've spent more than that from shopping at Costco on an empty stomach (rookie mistake).
- fouc 5y agoFor Canada, it looks to be hard to acquire a used one for less than $250-280 CAD. So about $200-$220 USD. Still a solid choice. I find it hard to imagine there's any android phone that can beat this phone for the same price (used or not!), OS support, camera quality, speaker quality, CPU speed & task switching speed, overall responsiveness, etc.
- Ourgon 5y agoAbility to install a free software distribution, side-load software, run a plethora of Linux apps through Termux, fix the screen if you happen to break it without the thing complaining about "non-genuine parts", build, run and distribute software for the device without needing to pay a third party for the privilege of doing so, hook the thing up to a keyboard and display to use it for real work, install a full firewall blocking outgoing as well as incoming traffic... Oh wait, those are all things you can not do with those iOS devices. Since these happen to be things I do it seems that iPhone won't be myPhone. Also, why don't these friggin' iOS devices support Ogg/Vorbis? I just added a transcoding option to Spodcast [1] to allow those poor souls using such devices to follow Spotify-hosted podcasts through RSS. None of my devices had any problems with Ogg/Vorbis but it turns out iOS simply does not support it. VLC on iOS does as do some other apps but those are not podcast players. Bad Apple. [1] https://github.com/Yetangitu/Spodcast https://github.com/Yetangitu/Spodcast
- mattl 5y agoI’ve yet to see anyone distributing music only in Ogg Vorbis save for some backdoored Spotify thing.
- 5y ago
- gzer0 5y agoI am struggling to understand where you are coming from. Can you elaborate? The cheapest second-hand iPhone that runs the latest iOS 15.0+ is an iPhone SE 1st gen (2016). Current prices on eBay indicate a price of $70. There is not a single Android that has been supported for this long of a time.
- mattl 5y agoYou can run iOS 15 on an iPhone SE (2016). They're very cheap to pick up. Around $70.
- gzer0 5y agoAhh my mistake, you're right. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe3fa5df43/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe...
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoThat’s my “low-end” test device. I run iOS 14 on it. Cost me about $100.
- jamesy0ung 5y agoYep, I'm still using mine as my daily driver.
- neurostimulant 5y agoSecond-hand iphones are expensive in asia. For example, that second-hand iphone SE 2020 you mentioned cost ~$350 here. That's more expensive than some locally-produced mid-range android phones.
- exikyut 5y agoWow, I'm very curious as to why! Is it because they're imported, or because the asia-side emphasis is on export? This also makes me wonder what the price dropoff across models is compared to the worldwide average. Is every model "oh wow" more expensive, or is there a gradient upward trend that tapers off the closer you get toward the iPhone 13 end?
- wutwut5521 5y agoWhen I did iOS dev I could get by okay with an ipod touch, since I did not need cell or GPS testing. These are $200 new, $150 refurbed for the prev edition. The other route to go is a device farm service, IIRC AWS offers this nowadays.
- red369 5y agoDid you include low storage (e.g. 16GB) iPhone 6S and SE 2016 in your search? I’m mostly just curious whether your primary phones generally cost less than those. It would be hard to find much for cheaper than those where I am. Unrelated, but I find it interesting that storage size seems to affect second hand value so strongly. I mean that it looks like doubling would cost more than a few generations newer.
- asddubs 5y agoi bought an iphone 6s for this purpose for 50€. upon mentioning this to somebody i was also given a second one with a crap battery for free
- beagle3 5y agoThat’s an iPhone 6S; I’ve seen them go for $100, or less with stuff like “battery runs out in 3 mins so must be connected to charger” which should be sufficient if you just develop.
- paulpauper 5y agobuying an iphone means it's still in the apple ecosystem. the problem is not the money but the hassle of having to buy it
- scarface74 5y agoSo you don’t want to be in the Apple ecosystem. But you want to develop for an Apple product? How will you support the product when users encounter bugs?
- hungryforcodes 5y agoI have had to support clients iOS apps and absolutely want nothing to do with the Apple eco system. We created dev accounts and bought a physical iPhone for the devs which we shared amongst everyon. An emulator would have been perfect in fact.
- svnpenn 5y agoMeanwhile, Android Studio is free and open source: https://developer.android.com/studio https://developer.android.com/studio
- chayleaf 5y agoit's a pain to build so everyone uses google's prebuilt binaries - which are non-free
- amarshall 5y agoThe project makes it not super-obvious, but it’s just KVM underneath. Also it’s likely against the EULA to run on non-Apple hardware.
- withinboredom 5y agoIf the software can’t tell the difference, does it matter? And if the EULA is unenforceable in your jurisdiction, does it matter?
- amarshall 5y agoTo the first: yes, because that doesn’t suddenly make it legal, just less likely to be found out. To the second: I mean, if the EULA doesn’t matter then it doesn’t matter.
- bri3d 5y agoYou can also buy into Corellium for this - I suppose the same idea but a closed "cloud" virtualization provider.
- lucb1e 5y agoThat sounded amazing until I clicked to the pricing and then to the FAQ about this "cores" concept > newer devices, such as the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, require six cores I'm not keeping up to date with apple phone numbers, but since OP speaks of 11 I take it that 8 must be at least a few years old. So "newer devices" here just means "any reasonable device". 6 cores is $295 a month on the cheapest plan. If you need it more than once every few years, it's cheaper to get a real phone used. Thanks for the tip nevertheless! Can be useful in a pinch for sure :)
- bri3d 5y agoCorellium is more for low-level library and kernel debugging and situations where you need control over the boot process, the same kind of thing you'd use qemu for vs. the iOS Simulator in Docker-OSX or AWS Mac instances or whatever. For just running UI tests, AWS Mac instances or Appium/Browserstack/whatever is going to be way cheaper and more practical. For low level debugging situations using real hardware is impractical or impossible as you need stolen debug probes (or to be part of the super exclusive Apple research program) and/or custom hardware.
- saagarjha 5y agoCorellium is quite helpful even as an app developer when debugging things going on outside of your process.
- saagarjha 5y agoCorellium can also bill you hourly at (IMO) much more affordable rates.
- amelius 5y agoWouldn't you need an Apple ID at some point? And doesn't it phone home and report you?
- lucb1e 5y agoGood questions. I guess for eventual publishing, the app repository fees need to be paid indeed. That only applies to development and not security testing though.
- rexf 5y agoTwo factor is a challenge with development (for IAP sandbox) accounts. I have to be careful to constantly not turn on two factor for test accounts. The iPhone will keep prompting me to opt-in, but I don't have several spare phone numbers or '2nd Apple' trusted devices for 2FA. Apple's 2FA details: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/manage-factor-authentication-apple-iphd709a3c46/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/manage-factor-authent... While I support 2FA usage, I wish there was a way to say 'I understand the risks and do not want 2FA on this account'.
- toastal 5y ago2FA requires a phone number!?
- ge96 5y agoIs it "buy into" if you use stuff like Browserstack? I use their live devices (camera/audio feed specifically) although not sure how far you can go eg. app-level install. Looks like you can and use stuff like Appium.
- chrismorgan 5y agoAt $49/month, it’s a fairly significant expense. Good if you’re using it for other stuff already, but not exactly cheap otherwise. (There’s also $39/month annually, but $468 is well past the cost of second-hand hardware.)
- ge96 5y agoYeah I was thinking about that, for example if you had one device but you wanted to back test versions of software is it easy to do that? What I mean is like iOS/Safari 14 over 15
- cyberpunk 5y agoI'm really not trying to be rude, but if you're a serious developer, 'security person' or otherwise, the cost of entry for apple is not a problem. I know I'll get abused probably for saying it, but I mean come on. An apple device is what, one days worth of consultancy time? For a security researcher maybe an hour? It's the cost of business. If you're priced out of getting into that particular game (I was too, once) then do something adjacent and switch once you're earning 10k a year and can afford an apple device, if you really want to work on apple devices..
- danuker 5y ago
- cyberpunk 5y agoI'm not an apple fanboy. I do have a M1, but I once spent 4 months porting KDE to solaris 10 x86 to run on a hp probook (and even got paid to do it)... I routinely try to exit the apple ecosystem but it always costs me pain and time, which hasn't been worth it for a number of years now. looks at drawer of ubuntu dell XPS's, ThinkPads running openbsd, etc etc. I've fucking TRIED... :( It's been linux and bsd machines as clients for work for almost 20 years.. And yet I keep having to go back to OSX for reliability. At some point you have to just accept certain things are the cost of business..
- rbut 5y agoReliability? I run a Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13, and Ubuntu on a custom i9 desktop with no reliability issues at all. In fact I spend less time fixing things than I used to with my Macs (which I used exclusively for 13 years). What reliability issues are you talking about?
- smoldesu 5y agoThen it's not for you. No shame in admitting that. For other people, though, Macbooks simply also don't make sense. Wanna run that 32-bit plugin you use in Photoshop? You're out of luck. How about some advanced Docker development? Hope you don't plan on doing it locally. Hunted by your government for whistleblowing? Probably shouldn't use a laptop that can automate the process of ratting you out. If you're a webdev or hipster programmer chasing the most lucrative Web3 gigs, sure, buying a Macbook is probably the kind of status symbol your peers will respect you for. At the end of the day though, they're all just tools with different uses. If you can use an ARM laptop for day-to-day work, then don't let anyone stop you from doing it. What people dislike is your "every serious developer owns a Macbook" claim. It's the sort of thing you hear from West-coast Google engineers who look around their office of L3 Javascript employees for a sample size before posting a comment. It honestly doesn't reflect the myriad of programmers you'll encounter in the world; some of the most productive 10x developers and "security people" I've met are using systems that even I would consider asinine, like NixOS, QUBES, Whonix or OpenBSD. I don't knock them, though. We judge hackers based on their skill, not their salary range, clout, and least of all by the laptop they have in their backpack.
- 908B64B197 5y agoHonestly why bother? For app dev Macs are basically free. Takes no time to break-even. Can even incorporate and expense-it.