Introducing Prompt. Nice SSH for iOS.
panic.com
panic.com
Prompt is a clean, crisp, and cheerful SSH client
What does that mean? What does a clean ssh client do; not commit any protocol violations? What is crisp? When you bite into it, it's like a ripe apple? What does cheerful mean? Is the ssh client really happy that it can make a TCP connection to the intarwebs, especially for me?
What does this sentence mean to someone that wants to ssh from their phone?
it helps you when you need it, and stays out of your way when you don’t
So when I want to be sshing, I can run it, and when I don't want to be sshing, I don't have to run it? Splendid. It works like every other computer program ever made.
Perfect for system administrators, web developers, movie-style hackers (“Let me just TCP/IP into the UNIX port!”), or any person who needs to connect remotely and type some magic.
So I googled for "ssh client", found your page, and you're telling me who uses ssh clients. How would you get to this page without knowing what ssh is, and how would you know what ssh is without needing to use it?
Anyway, a lot of happy-sounding words for ... a program that decrypts text from the Internet and writes it to the screen.
Simple things done well are among the most delightful discoveries I can make in my human existence.
Have you ever had a perfect omelet? I mean, perfect? Fluffy, nice balance of tasty fillings, not overdone? I have. Maybe twice. Each time, it was wonderful. Wonderful for the fact that with just five ingredients, it created subtle, delicious flavors and enjoyable textures. Wonderful for the discipline and focus necessary not to overcomplicate it with unneeded flourish.
It's so simple, compared to some of the more elaborate meals I've eaten. And that's what made it so special.
Another parallel is tools. Have you ever hefted a really nice kitchen knife? Maybe one of those numbers where the blade and the shank are forged from a single piece of metal? Everything just swoops and melts together, and the blade feels like a comfortable extension of your arm. Just the right weight, perfect leverage, a tool that was agonized over by a craftsman desperate to make the best.
Simple, relative to a Swiss Army knife? Absolutely. And that's where its power comes from.
iOS has some things about it that reward simplicity and focus. It's really easy to make an overwrought, complex app on any platform, and iOS is no exception. With a lot of care and attention to detail, though, you can make something that's simple, not distracting, made from the barest components necessary and extremely good at solving a very specific problem with minimum fuss.
When that happens, it's so nice to see.
*nix rewards people who build their own stuff, which is fine, but the tradeoff in this is craftsmanship. It's easy enough to get system tools to the level of "good enough for you" without ever reaching good enough for everyone. That, I suspect, is the cultural difference you've detected here.
ssh is simple.
I suspect that the typical person needing to SSH into a box is already someone who knows how to operate in UNIX. Otherwise, you're using the wrong protocol.
This isn't a conversation about the simplicity (or not) of the SSH protocol, but rather a conversation on why it's exciting when good, simple tools like Prompt are created.
There's a paradox here where ssh is already a good, simple tool, so how do you improve on that? Make it easier to type on an iPad? I don't think that's going to happen, so let's take a step back: putty, SecureCRT? Those can certainly have some improvements to their interfaces made. So, we move from ssh client to SSH Application.
Now, we get to the meat: given that you can hook an iPad to one of those keyboard docks, does this make a compelling thin client? Anybody?
Even though I think you're splitting hairs (I think the omelette and knife examples work well) I can write about a really nice pair of chopsticks: the ones I'm using right now to eat my pasta for dinner. They're not fancy, I think I bought the 5 (pair) pack for less than $10. But the weight of the metal is just perfect. Not too heavy, not too light... just slightly heavier than a wooden disposable pair of chopsticks. It's a very rounded square shape with small grooves on the tapered end to give you enough purchase to grab pretty much anything while not getting in your way and being difficult to manipulate because of edges or overall slipperiness. There's nothing ornate about this pair, which makes it easy to clean and to pair with random sets of my modernist spoons and forks. Unlike the stereotypical huge plastic pair of chopsticks at Chinese restaurants, the heavy flat metal ones that fatigue my hand at Korean restaurants, and the wooden pair that splinters that comes with my takeout, this is perfect.
Okay, so I went there. But I'm not kidding, I really do mean it about these chopsticks.
> Make it easier to type on an iPad? I don't think that's going to happen
Really, that is the only thing I compare when I'm shopping for an iOS ssh client. Ease of typing all the keys I need in an ssh client makes all the world of difference on a screen as small as an iPhone, while it may not be as big of a deal on iPad. Plus, Prompt works out-of-the-box just fine with my bluetooth keyboard that I've seen, unlike iSSH and some other alternatives, so that's already made the $5 well worth it to me.
You see, chopsticks have much more variation than ssh, which is just a protocol. It reminds me of a highly ranked recent post about a so-called magic color highlighting theme. Then at the end of the comment one poor guy said: "I'm I the only one to happily stick to the default?". Come on, there are most serious things to discuss in the world, and on HN, than a slick ssh iPhone app, or a color theme. For instance, we could discuss the next ssh protocols, those that will allow to solve the "where is my file" problem (listed in pg's list of ideas, can't find it right now).
Good bamboo chopsticks are useful too, but finding the right weight/size combination is usually the difficult part for me. Part of what I think makes my metal chopsticks so awesome is that they're not too light or too heavy, and bamboo usually end up being on the lighter end. I have small tremors in my hands most days and a little extra weight makes all the difference in ease of use.
> Come on, there are most serious things to discuss in the world, and on HN, than a slick ssh iPhone app, or a color theme.
Personally, I think discussions about usability and good design are worthwhile, even on HN. Your product or vision or what have you is not as good as it can be if you (or someone you work with) don't at least take those into consideration. Why do I care that an iOS ssh client is polished on top of technically 'just working'? It saves me time and effort I can then put into my own work, at the least. And maybe that work could be something to improve on ssh ;)
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 they all do the same simple thing, especially on touchscreen devices. 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.
Oh, and why do they include a description of the target group? Maybe because some people read the Panic blog without knowing what the hell SSH is? Those Panic guys are are pretty well known.
Technically, an alliteration is based on the sound. So while "clean", "crisp" and "client" are an alliteration (beginning with the [k] sound), cheerful (beginning with [tʃ]) isn't part of it.
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 screen real estate. Can prompt do this as well?
Prompt seems to have fixed these issues, and I'm really happy to give them my $5.
Mapping a physical keyboard and display onto a touchscreen/display involves tradeoffs.
• The keyboard I am using right now is >50% larger than my entire iPad display. It won't fit even if I sacrifice the entire display to keyboard.
• Will you overlay the keyboard on the character matrix? How do you know where to put it that you won't cover the part I'm trying to see? I generally want to see the bottom, that is pretty much worst case.
• I need a control and escape key for command line editing, and I need a dozen symbols plus the digits to type normal unix commands. The keyboard is getting either pretty big, or multiplexed.
When you use ssh on a unix machine, you are taking advantage of infrastructure that isn't there on the iPad, like the ability to scp your keys and favorite configuration file into a .ssh directory.
• How bizarre is the sequence to get my encrypted private keys into my iPad?
• How complicated are you going to make the preferences? Just the default ssh client config on Debian is showing 34 options and I've got ones that aren't in the list in my personal config file.
What makes this unique to iOS?
# aptitude search '?provides(x-terminal-emulator)' | wc -l
32
Nobody apologizes in their marketing copy for speciating.
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 store. A quick google reveals there is also iSSH, TouchTerm, Terminal 426, and pTerm.
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 one of the terminal emulators, but then when I needed to pop up gimp for the odd image fix it was unusable. (tiled window manager meets the legion of floating windows with strange ideas about window manager hinting.)
I hate to say it, but it wore me down. I relegated the netbook to machine room console duty, bought a lighter main laptop, and just use VirtualBox to run my portable linux machine. My laptop load is 50% lighter, and the virtual linux box is faster than the netbook anyway. A much better solution. (and dark blue on black is legible on this machine).
In case you still care, XMonad has some special configs to allow gimp to crap its windows all over some virtual desktop (which I recommend you reserve solely for gimp).
As the type of Mac user that has one foot in the console and one foot in the pretty GUI that is OS X, it's pretty great when someone can bridge that gap -- be it a kickass Terminal like iTerm2, or what I can only expect is an excellent app from Panic, Prompt.
Skip the marketing (still good copy to read), find some way to use the app and judge Panic that way.
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 surprise that they're marketing it that way.
In reality, most typical iOS users (not the same as Mac users!) want something functional that gets the job done and don't really give a hoot about having the app 'get out of the way' or be 'crisp' (and the AppStore top seller lists would seem to indicate this), which, as you have mentioned seem to have little meaning for a Unix command line crypto/networking/admin tool.
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.
Anyway, a lot of happy-sounding words for ... a program that decrypts text from the Internet and writes it to the screen.
You're focusing on features. They're talking about design.
How do you type ctrl-c? How do you type the arrow keys? Any client must support these features. The differentiator is the design -- how easy they are to use, how nice they look, etc.
F.ex. //it helps you when you need it, and stays out of your way when you don’t// I read as "We don't use UI chrome that's distracting, only showing those things that you need contextually".
There are many ways to arrive on that page that do not involve googling for "ssh client". It's a blog for a software company, but there are other topics on that blog that don't have anything to do with software (like food, retro games, and design). Anyone can read it, not just the geeks who know what SSH is.
Point being: Why obscure what the app does to people who are less familiar with terminals or SSH? I don't see any fault in trying to educate others about the app by giving non-technical readers concrete answers of who would most likely use it.
that seems like a gross generalization. Having had and used both android and iOS I never saw that behavior in myself or others.
I have to agree with OP, i don't understand the excitement over this SSH client, interface included. A shell prompt is one of the oldest interfaces. iOS can support 3D graphics rendering and gaming and panic is selling a $5 SSH prompt. Seems bizarre.
Doom Creator Says Android Not Profitable http://www.mobiledia.com/news/87020.html
I will (and actually did) gladly pay $5 for software that is designed well and works very well.
Maybe Android users are just more discerning in who they give their money to?
Panic is known for their sub-standard software?
Wow, that's incredibly untrue. Quality (and price) is a factor in absolutely everything that's for sale in any industry anywhere on earth. Price and quality.
This will come as a great surprise to Mac and iOS users everywhere.
Screen shots here: http://www.panic.com/blog/2011/04/introducing-prompt-ssh-for...
and here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prompt/id421507115?mt=8
It wears me right out. Like those cheap painted "sale!' signs at car dealerships.
How dare they describe such a holy item as an SSH client without a list of which protocol weaknesses it has taken into account! SSH isn't cheery, this is serious business! UNIX IS NOT A TOY! Harumph! Etc.
I agree. I use ssh somewhere around 10 hours per weekday, have used a bunch of different clients, and really have no idea what sets this application apart from any other ssh client other than a bunch of vague adjectives. If they can't manage to set the product apart, at all, why am I going to give it a look?
I know some of the other comments here excuse that by saying its marketing, or that these words are to describe the interface. Thats good and all, but if you're trying to sell me an ssh client, its OK (hell, almost mandatory) to assume you're talking to a slightly technical audience. Show us the nitty gritty that will make me _want_ to pick this application over any other. As much as I clicked around, I couldn't find anything.
Because it's Panic, a company that has earned your attention by consistently delighting you. If that doesn't describe you, they probably aren't really trying to sell you an SSH client.
assume you're talking to a slightly technical audience
I wouldn't dream of installing a SSH client on my iPad - simply because the keyboard has no physical feedback. I can't type on that thing. I guess there will be many people who will buy this app and still will be disappointed afterwards.
I've been using prompt for a day now, and so far it feels better than the others. The app design feels really clean, the method of expanding the keyboard to handle modifier keys and frequently-used non-alpha keys works well without grabbing too much screen real estate (this is clearly visible in the screen shots for what it's worth).
Finally, the terminal emulation has been flawless for me so far. Emacs runs well (and is quite usable with Prompt's modifier key placement, unlike in other iOS ssh clients I'd tried; remember, folks, ESC is Meta, Meta is ESC). touchTerm had some screen lag/partial refresh issues for me with Emacs -- these may have been fixed in later versions, though, as I gave up at some point.
In short, I like it.
obDisclaimer: I don't know the developers. I don't have a dog in this fight. I do like the app. I'm not the only one who likes it though -- see the daringfireball take here:
Same experience on a 3gs (I've been waiting for the white 4, not sure why anymore), painfully slow to do anything, including just closing a connection. I just gave up waiting and let tcp time it out.
The biggest killer of being able to use it was readline support is horrid. First thing I did was login and escape-/ + ssh + n a few times and half the screen turned into some amalgamation of things that matched ssh. I didn't try emacs readline support but expect its about the same.
Interface is spot on, but it has a long ways to go before it can do basic terminal work. iSSH is still going to be on my homescreen for a while it looks like.
Other than that, emacs seems to work without issues! (Also, backspace was sending C-h, so I had to remap that in emacs.
Furthermore, I don't understand how someone could even make the remark that an ssh client reminds them of linux, and mean it negatively. :-) I certainly don't want an the equivalent IOS SSH client to the one Apple makes for OSX -- Terminal is rather shitty.
[1] BT keyboards on ipads don't support CTRL as a modifier for all keys, you have to create a workaround. So far, iSSH is the only app I've seen that has done it (By using option and remapping).
EDIT: Ga! Read the wrong tab.. was responding to Prompt and Grubers comments on it (re: linux), but this link points to the actual app. Just clearing that up... sorry.
- no xterm mouse support (no, option-click is not the same)
- the utterly stupid default for PageUp/PageDown/Home/End, which is correct for OSX UI, but utterly wrong for terminals.
Less obvious (relavent to UI):
- No notification support
- No window splitting (yes, screen works, but, re: changing panes, see xterm mouse, above)
- inability to launch a particular named window group from the command line (if this is possible, please tell me how! :-))
...And much, much more! [1]
[1] :-) And I guess that's about it for the things that bugged me compared to, you know, the actual xterm.
Caveat - this is how my work laptop is setup, my personal one is set to "\033[H" and "\033[F" for home/end respectively, but it works as well and I don't remember how I set it up. I'm remembering having some issues with the prefs wanting to escape the backslashes so "\003[H" ended up as "\\003[H" or something like that...
For PageUp/PageDown I find that applying the shift key with them does the trick (at least in applications like vim/less). However you can probably apply a similar trick for them in the prefs.
The Control key (jumping word boundaries) works sometimes for me, sometimes not, haven't tracked that one down yet.
edit: by "correctly" for home/end I mean jumping to the beginning/end of a line.
Still, I'm genuinely curious because I know you're not the only one that finds Terminal lacking.
Also, I think a recent update added support for horizontally splitting windows (with cmd+D).
I do agree though, I think Apple could do a much better job with Terminal.
You can split windows vertically. Not horizontally.
Could you not use osascript to launch a window group from the command line?
iTerm was crashy for me. This is not acceptable, no matter the other features. I cannot recall ever crashing Terminal.app.
I've got, for example, ctrl+a+t setup to trigger a script that opens a new screen tab, prompts for [user@]host:, starts up an ssh session to the host, renames the tab to host for easy reference.
- 256 color support (for your pretty emacs or vim)
- advanced bookmarks, with tagging
- send to multiple tabs
It's also knows if any programs are running inside the shell and changes the red "X" button in the top left corner accordingly. If the button is "X", you know you can close the terminal without losing any work. If a program is running (even suspended with CTRL-Z) Terminal changes the button to a circle to indicate that work would be lost if the window was closed.
escape ^Zz
C-a interferes with command line editing and Emacs. C-z makes it a pain to background a process in screen, but if you're like me, you probably never do that, anyway.
iSSH has more features (the port-forwarding alone will keep me using it), but Prompt seems to have the basic login-and-command-line functionality working far better than any other client I've used. (All IMO, of course.)
openssl rsa -in test.pem > test.rsa
unable to load Private Key 56049:error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line:/SourceCache/OpenSSL098/OpenSSL098-35/src/crypto/pem/pem_lib.c:650:Expecting: ANY PRIVATE KEY
I'll check to make sure I'm an idiot by seeing what I can generate from Amazon itself.
Apr 14 21:20:51 ip---- sshd[31560]: Received disconnect from ---------: 11: Normal Shutdown. Thank you! openssl rsa -in ec2.pem > ec2.rsa
chmod 700 ec2.rsa
ssh-keygen -y -f ec2.rsa > ec2.rsa.pub
I was super excited when I downloaded TouchTerm, but it was just so difficult to do anything with it on my iPhone that I gave up, despite thinking it was very clever. The Prompt screenshots at least look a lot cleaner than TouchTerm's, but I don't want to go through another fit of excitement only to never actually use it.
not that 4-5$ is a big deal, but there are myriad of ssh clients for free on android, no doubt due to different clientele, and different developer sentiments.
More interested in code folding. Now THAT would be sweet.
I'm sure they're already working hard on Coda 2. I wonder if this might have been an experiment to see if Transit code could be ported to iOS
Could anyone enlighten me as to whether or not it supports SSH port forwarding and how well that works? iSSH works pretty well, but it pops up regularly warning that it's going to disconnect due to inactivity (despite the fact that I'm actively using the port tunnel to RDP into something).
Has anyone else noticed this or found one that doesn't do this? I'm doing this on iPhone, maybe the iPad is better, but I don't see any reason why.
And regarding 'Prompt', I dont see how Panic has made something 'new' here. There are several ssh clients with favorites, shortcuts and nice designs. Some are even free.
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 there, but currently not so usable in mobile Safari.
Panic also seems to be a quite reputable company. They've been in the Mac software business for a long time.
One could argue that iOS / Mobile Safari are both under incomparably more pressure to remain secure compared to any individual app, but you're totally right on a fundamental level. The truly paranoid should demand openness at all layers.
> You have to trust someone at some point.
Whole 'nother debate. ;)
> Panic also seems to be a quite reputable company. They've been in the Mac software business for a long time.
No doubt about that. I wasn't insinuating anything about their intentions (this didn't even occur to me until your comment). Just that an SSH client is a pretty complex piece of software, and there are plenty of ways to make mistakes. We've come a long way since the days of telnet and scrutiny / skepticism has played a big part in that.
Still if you are in an industry that demands careful vetting of security, I certainly agree one should not jump on a new SSH client right away.
EDIT: I caved and just bought Prompt. It is indeed pretty slick, though I don't have other iOS SSH clients to compare it to. There does appear to be some bugs: I can't seem to "disconnect" from a session, even though it's already hung. The little "eject" icon in the servers list doesn't seem to work.
I believe this is my first Tier 5 purchase, I'm such a bum.
This is Solaris 10 (SysV curses, with a hand-imported xterm-color terminfo entry). :-)
...or, hit the globe icon which takes you to the connections screen, and tap the eject icon.