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> There is way too much excitement over the simplest things ever.

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.

Wait, what?

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.

It's not clear to me what you're objecting to.

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.

You're making a category error against SSH with examples like knives, which have a lot of variation. Let's see you write as much about having used a "really nice chopstick" or typing an especially round period at the end of a sentence.

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?

> Let's see you write as much about having used a "really nice chopstick"..

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.

Metal chopsticks are an abomination, gives a awful metallic taste. Should be made of bamboo! And don't paint them please.

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).

I would normally agree, but for whatever reason these chopsticks don't give off any metallic taste. They're quite odd now that I think about it, and fairly difficult to find. I buy similar sets of them by randomly finding the utensil section at asian supermarkets and weighing all the chopstick pairs by hand.

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 ;)

Really nice chopsticks: powder coloured machined titanium with rough textured gripping ends:

http://www.tistix.com/cart/index.php?main_page=index&cPa...

Making a good SSH client for touchscreen devices is hard. Touchscreen devices have limited screen real estate and non-standard (read: limited) keyboards.

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.

> 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.

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.

My Latin teacher would not be disappointed by my failure because she knows that I have never been all that interested or good at that stuff ;)

> 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.

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?

I've been using iSSH for a long time. I can't get the arrow keys to work. And even when I use a bluetooth keyboard, I can't get the CNTRL key to work.

Prompt seems to have fixed these issues, and I'm really happy to give them my $5.

It isn't the ssh protocol(mostly), it is the user interface.

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

… really? I need to sort through 32 terminal emulators to use ssh on my Debian machine? Is that before or after I choose between the 44 window managers? And they all think they are pretty special. At least I only have 5 display managers to choose from.

Nobody apologizes in their marketing copy for speciating.

> really? I need to sort through 32 terminal emulators to use ssh on my Debian machine?

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.

Really? – yes.

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).

>tiled window manager meets the legion of floating windows with strange ideas about window manager hinting

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).

I would wager part of the excitement is that Panic is an excellent and long-standing company in the Apple community, and they've proven time and time again they can release quality, beautiful software.

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.

What you're pointing out is a quality of the Mac community, which has a certain amount of overlap with the iOS community. In this particular case, the company - Panic - is a highly regarded indie Mac developer so the copy reads like how it would for Mac apps.

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.

Be that as it may, but, uh......

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.

Right, because with PuTTY on your Linux box, you don't need a virtual keyboard on the screen. Most of the complexity is off-screen. Touch devices don't have that luxury. Now imagine PuTTY with a virtual keyboard built in and you start to see some clutter.

They're talking about the interface, dude. Making a pretty, usable terminal for iOS is non-trivial, that's what they're selling.

What does a clean ssh client do; not commit any protocol violations?

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.

Right, it's called marketing. And it tries to describe what the authors were aiming for.

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".

"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?"

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.

It seems just like ConnectBot for Android, except it costs $5.

I think your comment highlights a difference between the Android and iOS communities. Android users just want free software, while iOS users don't mind paying for quality. Guess which platform ends up with the slickest software, with the most spit and polish. Developers find paying customers on iOS, so that's where the develop.

> Android users just want free software, while iOS users don't mind paying for quality.

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.

Sure, maybe I'm over generalizing. However, I keep reading stories about how it is hard to make money in Android, like this one....

Doom Creator Says Android Not Profitable http://www.mobiledia.com/news/87020.html

Being able to ssh into a server while on the road with nothing more than an iPad is a feature that has value to some people (like me, for example). For an app that is really useful, the difference between $5 and free is negligible. I just paid more for my coffee than I did for Prompt, and I didn't think about that twice either.

You drink expensive coffee.

Frankfurt, Germany. It's expensive but low quality ;-)

The excitement is not just over "an SSH client". Knowing that Panic engineered and designed it is a huge selling point. They've been known for years to make some of the best software for OS X. This is their first venture into iOS and they don't disappoint.

I will (and actually did) gladly pay $5 for software that is designed well and works very well.

There is next to no software I can think of where a $5 price point would be bizarre. How can a $5 SSH client even begin to be bizarre?

Actually, I believe in this case iOS users are paying because they're conditioned to pay. I don't think the quality argument for this ssh client really holds water.

Maybe Android users are just more discerning in who they give their money to?

"Maybe Android users are just more discerning in who they give their money to?"

Panic is known for their sub-standard software?

"I don't think the quality argument for this ssh client really holds water."

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.

You know there are many cheaper and free ssh clients for iOS, right?

Free ssh client for iOS? Do you have an example? I'm genuinely interested, but haven't found one.

ZaTelnet. The terrible name seems to keep it from ever being popular.

I used zatelnet before buying Panic's app. It was absolutely horrendous.

Technically minded Android users develop good software (like ConnectBot) for themselves, and then share it with the like minded community for free as in beer and free as in freedom.

That's why Android is the better OS in my opinion. iOS wouldn't even let me copy an app that I wrote myself to my own device, it's just incredibly restrictive. That said, I did finally cave and buy an iPad after trying out and being disappointed by several other tablets (Linux and Android based ones). But no matter what OS, I don't mind paying five bucks for a decent utility and I would have paid for ConnectBot as well, which incidentally I use on my phone.

That's what annoys me about the iOS ecosystem, there is a marketplace, not a community.

That's what annoys me about the iOS ecosystem, there is a marketplace, not a community.

This will come as a great surprise to Mac and iOS users everywhere.

As a linux user I'm accostomed to talking to a person when I want to get a utility, it's usually a link on someone's blog. However for OSX, all software is sold by companies. I usually have to pay $10 (only $10! they tell me) to a company. It's much less personal and disconnected.

I don't know, many of those "companies" are one or two person operations. I haven't had that experience.

Yes they are small companies, but they are companies none the less. They reply to emails in the royal we, they have business names etc. I much prefer when I email a person.

I love ConnectBot. Is there a way to hit CTRL + arrows?

Yes, the Prompt keyboard features both a ctrl toggle and arrow keys.

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

Everything in the ios/webapp field has to be the fun! and easy! way to do whatever. "colontast.ic is the fun and easy and social new way to do colonoscopies!" Picture that page with sky blue background, happy cartoon characters and rounded buttons (3 easy steps!).

It wears me right out. Like those cheap painted "sale!' signs at car dealerships.

I know you're trying for comedy, but I prefer the fun and easy way to X than the confusing and miserable way - which is how many programs are by default.

That's not you speaking as a UNIX hacker, that's you speaking as a someone who takes a permanently miserable attitude on almost everything.

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.

>Anyway, a lot of happy-sounding words for [...]

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.

If they can't manage to set the product apart, at all, why am I going to give it a look?

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

Some, even in technical audience have a taste for good UI.

Ok, and thanks for assuming from my post that I don't care about interface, but then show me _that_. All I see other than an generic iOS interface is a keyboard with a few convenience keys. Is that it?

Yep, that's all. But hey, it's iOS where you can - given enough hype and marketing - make everything sell well.

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.

Insufferable much?