Show HN: Run iOS apps in the browser | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Run iOS apps in the browser

app.io

I'm not hearing anything, I guess audio isn't emulated yet? This would be great with web audio. Having a podcast app, I can't unfortunately get much use from it in the absence.

Anyway, congrats. I hope Apple's okay with it because the concept is crazy-awesome for users and developers.

Thanks! Audio is on our wish-list. We'll count this as another 'vote' for that feature. Apple is aware of what we're out to achieve here.

Are they okay with it? Apple has always seemed like the type of company that wouldn't want to dilute the "Apple Experience". I'm quite impressed they're aware of it and haven't asked you to shut it down. Kudos.

Apple hasn't had much of an experience for developers recently...

We are not trying to compete with or dilute the "Apple Experience". We love Apple and believe our tech is necessary to help the ecosystem.

Wondering how the streaming works. It seems to send a bunch of GIF images which hold the diff from the last frame when something is moving.

The framerate is quite low at the moment, but that's probably because of HN?!

Edit: it also sends full JPEGs of the screen when there's much going on. I believe my JSMPEG[1] would really be a viable alternative for this use-case. Streaming support is in the works :)

[1] https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg

Hi there, COO here. I wrote a good response on this when we were branded as Kickfolio: http://www.quora.com/How-Does-X-Work/How-does-Kickfolio-work.... You're quite right - we stream diff'd GIFs and JPEGs at different times. We did originally try encoding with FFMPEG and other technologies, but surprisingly this works best! We're constantly improving the algorithm. I'm just about to push up another change this weekend :)

While your implementation seems to be quite ingenious, the answer on Quora doesn't explain anything besides "sending frames" and "magic happens".

I would have liked to see a more in-depth explanation, but I understand if you don't want to share it at this point.

;) Quite right - we have two patent applications in the works! So unfortunately I can't provide a whole lot more detail at this point. Feel free to email me though if you're interested to chat offline. Great job with JSMPEG by the way.

I was able to open app.io and run the demo inside the demo on app.io when it asked me to tweet (which got to me to Safari). It actually ran really nicely.

Internally, we call doing that Appception :)

We need to tweet deeper!

Downward is the only way forward.

Wow, I didn't expect this to upset so many people. Just trying to inject some light-hearted humour.

Reddit style humor is discouraged on hacker news. Comments that aren't thoughtful are also discouraged. I even think meta comments like this are discouraged.

Reddit-style humour? It was in reference to a film.

I'm honestly flabbergasted. Oh HN, how you never fail to disappoint.

The problem on Reddit isn't really the existence of lighthearted comments, but the fact that they inevitably get moderated to the top of the thread, obscuring more insightful comments. That's what they're trying to prevent here, I think. I wouldn't take it personally.

We've been a customer of these guys for months now. They power the preview functionality of our app builder.

I have to say that they're a bunch of awesome folks who are responsive to feedback and really work hard to make their service matter. Keep it up guys!

@gozmike I just want to know ONE thing. How did you get to know about this company?? I could've searched down the rabbit hole without ever hearing about it. Mind sharing sources?

Pieceable let us down. Somehow when looking for an alternative I stumbled upon app.io when it was called Kickfolio.

Please tell us more about how you use this in your app builder. I'd love to see this implemented for real-time native response per online edit. Got a link you can share?

We don't have real-time changes yet - to do so we'd probably use something like Simperium.

What we do now is reload an iframe showing the app.io embedded viewer. The iframe's URL supports specifying arbitary parameters that show up in NSUserDefaults. Upon launch, our app checks these parameters and uses it to connect to our backend and retrieve its latest configuration.

This runs amazingly smooth, especially considering the traffic it is going to get from HN at the moment. Kudos!

http://www.appsurfer.com/ does the same for Android, but it feels definitely more sluggish than this.

Thanks! Our technical ninjas are working their magic behind the scenes!

Nice one davey!

That should be their headline, I didn't get what they are doing the first time I saw the page earlier today.

you should also check out http://www.appsurfer.com/ for running android apps.

Amazon also has one in their app store. It runs on EC2.

For example, (picking a random paid app) http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007VUCAVO

That's really impressive and works well. Hopefully iOS will eventually have a way to try out apps before purchasing.

Thanks for the feedback! We're A/B testing a few different options so I guess you got a badly-performing one :)

If you're looking for more feedback: I got a homepage that was very clear, and immediately intrigued me. I clicked "Try now." That took me to a signup form at which point I immediately closed the window.

You should try to make some kind of demo available for the user without having to do anything except click once.

Hi there, Co-Founder/Designer here. Thanks for that feedback. The iPhone right in the center of the page is an actual demo of an app using our service. You can interact with that straight away as you land on the page. In this case I will take that feedback on board and work to make that much clearer in the future with new designs. Much appreciated!

Why is the demo inside an iPhone graphic if the point is to show that I can run it in a browser?

This made it very difficult for me to understand the concept: I wondered if you were showing me a web app that accessed native hardware.

Hi Ronald. It's mostly for context. We enable 'try before you buy' for mobile apps, in which case hinting to the user that this is an iOS app increases the likelihood that that user will download the real app. (We actually have two core use cases: early beta testing, and marketing apps). Point taken though; thanks for the feedback.

Oh, wow. Yeah, toss out the "interactive app demo" text. Just make a flashing "click here". Glad to help!

FWIW, I did the same thing. It needs to be clearer.

fwiw I immediately understood what I was looking at and proceeded to get hooked on that game :)

a popover or floating arrow or something might be a decent way to solve some people not getting it.

Just try this on my Android phone, it shows the desktop web page... If it gives the webpage that suits for Android phones, I think this would be more useful.

Hi, Designer/Co-founder here. Ed (our CEO) is currently working on a branch called feature/mobile-optimizations...so expect big things in the coming weeks. :)

Cool!

Very cool.

Have you seen Pieceable Viewer? It's very similar, but I believe it used an implementation of UIKit in flash to simulate the apps. They were bought out by Facebook, but the website is still live. http://pieceable.com

Yep we love Pieceable and know some of the guys. They've done well!

Does this violate Apple's developer terms in any way, as you are running these in the simulator?

Not that we are aware of. We've shown some people in Apple and they've loved it so far!

Great work! It was super easy to set up a project and it just worked. It just worked, I love it when I can say that.

A couple of feedback points:

- If the simulator could be more responsive, it would be great

- Seems like even though you are simulating an iPhone 5, it doesn't use Retina images (I'm on a MacBook Pro Retina and the images look pixelated)

- I think being able to set up a password should be available on the free plan as well

Also, for cost:

- Are you thinking of also implementing a (cheaper) "freelance" payment plan? Someone that can have up to 5 apps, but only needs a maximum of 5,000 views/month. I think the $109/month is a bit too much for a freelance developer

Agreed. Something in the $30-$50 region with a lower usage allowance and the ability for more (private) apps than the free allowance would be much more palatable to me as a freelancer.

$30-$50? Huh, how about $1 per usage?

That would be better for me (in the short-term), but supporting a large number of low-value customers is probably not going to be sustainable for them.

Thanks for the suggestions! This is a hot topic internally, so we'll have some more announcements in the coming months. Keep an eye on the blog/twitter.

We haven't forgotten about the indie devs! :)

Is this at all related to the Android-streaming software on http://www.appsurfer.com/, or is just a similar idea on a different platform?

Hi, COO here. It's a similar idea. We've chosen to focus on iOS first, then branch out in to many other platforms, even beyond mobile eventually.

I just tried it, and it is currently rather slow, but I suppose that is the HN effect. I signed up for a free account nevertheless, because as luck would have it, I'm working for a project right now, where this might come in handy.

However, I couldn't find any documentation on that, but do you also support iPad apps? I can see that that would be a tad more difficult due to the higher streaming data bandwith.

Nevertheless, great app, I like the idea.

CEO here. Thanks so much for the feedback. Yep, we are currently being slammed. Glad to have you on board. We do support iPad - checkout http://docs.app.io for a few options and ways you can use the service.

Ah, thanks, I found it under the API -> device page. You should put that on the front page somewhere, that it runs on iPhone & iPad. I may be a bit slow but since the demo was iPhone and since it is streaming, I supposed iPad was out of the loop.

Hi, Designer/Co-founder here. That's great feedback, thank you. I will rework the design to include iPad and make it more obvious we support both. :)

I was actually showing someone in Australia the site earlier today and it was snappy. Seems HN has caused some slowness :(

emdowling you are inexplicably hellbanned and all comments are dead, perhaps contact HN admins so you can take part in this conversation?

[EDIT no longer hellbanned]

He's not hellbanned, I can see him.

He was 16 minutes ago, hence my post.

Can you tell us how this works? A ton of Mac Minis Streaming iOS simulator output to a HTML5 canvas using vnc or something like that?

It does run on Mac Mini servers. We don't use VNC, but rather our own approach to make it work. We used to be called Kickfolio, and this Quora thread has a nice response from one of our other co-founders, Chris. http://www.quora.com/How-Does-X-Work/How-does-Kickfolio-work...

I was about to ask the question "Why didn't you use the video element" - answered well within the link (if anyone has the same question)

I used this the other day and it was significantly speedier.. i'm guessing it's the HN effect. Cool concept.

Thanks Chris, appreciate the support. [Co-founder]

Sorry guys, nice flat design and everything, but I'm on fiber and on a brand new MacBook Retina 15", and it is _sloooow_.

Good idea, but slow like this, not acceptable.

Its a shame that it is so slow, especially when its pretty amazing to be able to do this in a browser. Perhaps whilst the HN storm is taking place a less intensive demo could be implemented.

Dude have some respect, the just got HN'ed, it's okay. Check them again some hours or a day later. I guess they will add more bandwith when they have more customers to pay it.

Do you plan on integrating with cloud storage / sourcecode providers ? Something like a github instant preview, either directly on the project's home page, or in the source browser. Or, an HTML widget to enable developers / companies to embed previews of their work directly on their blog / homepages.

I can see a pretty bright future for your company, congrats.

The good folk at Jenkins actually created a plugin for the CI platform which we love: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/App.io+Plugin. We have an API so if anybody is keen to integrate with GitHub we'd gladly welcome it! Embedding into blogs and on homepages is possible today via a simple iFrame and is one of our core use cases. Thanks for your feedback and positive outlook on App.io's future.

FYI emdowling (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=emdowling) from app.io is replying to comments here with useful info but his account seems to have been hellbanned. You can turn showdead on in your HN profile page to read what he wrote.

We've been a customer for a few months now and use it to power the runtime for our App-Development-In-The-Cloud[1] startup. Very cool, and Chris et al are very nice and helpful guys!

[1] http://www.cloupp.com

Thanks mate! Appreciate the kind works and your hard work in building something great for developers, too!

This seems really cool. Unfortunately my app crashes and I can't see any logs to know why. I have some ideas as to why, but I won't know unless I can get to the log. I posted a message to the support link but no response. Logs would be good.

Very cool - I notice it works well on iOS Safari too.

Any plans for a native app or mobile optimised interface? For some apps, being able to touch is going to make the demo experience much better, and hopefully convert more users to paid installs.

Hi, COO here. Thanks for your feedback. Coincidentally, we have a mobile-optimized version being finished off shortly! We agree that a native app would be great. More on that in the coming months.

Would love to use this on my blog all the time, but the price point is way out of range. I've tried it though, and it's incredible if you can afford it.

Hey Natasham25, there's also a free plan that you can sign up for. You'll be able to embed it on your blog (for free) as long as the app plays stay under the limit.

Very cool! This actually can be very useful for our company to demo apps. I guess audio is not there yet, but still very nice and great URL as well.

I´m currently loading up my app and it takes forever to finish. Would be good if I could see one sample app and how exactly the whole thing works.

Hi there. It shouldn't take too long to process. I suggest clicking 'Support' from the dashboard and we'll investigate further. It may be an .IPA instead of an .APP (we require the simulator build), or we may need to reprocess your app manually. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Thanks Chris, I just sent you a message via the support interface. Cheers!

Are they running one Mac OS X instance per Simulator or is there a way to run multiple Simulators at once that I don't know of?

CEO here. We are running on Mac OS X and you can run multiple simulators by using multiple user accounts. This is a part of our approach but not all of it :)

I believe you can run multiple simulators with some hacking. (I did it successfully pre iOS5 but I think it can still be done)

I can't tell what the difference between the Pro and Business package is other than the price. Can you clarify? Cool idea btw.

Hi, Co-founder here. The Pro plan allows you up to 5 apps and 20,000 app plays per month. The Business plan allows you up to 20 apps and 100,000 app plays per month. More info can be found here: https://app.io/#pricing

I missed it since the first thing I did after seeing the demo was click Sign Up.

This works surprisingly well, great job. How many instances of iOS emulator can you run per machine? Do you run your own servers?

@emdowling - your comments aren't showing up here - maybe because your account is new? The service looks awesome btw!

Really great work!

This will also be great for us android users to see what all the hype about certain apps is all about.

OK, the tech behind this could be the first serious competitor to Teamviewer in a while. This is cool!

HN killed it? "Could not launch the application"

Ahh the HN effect. Looking into it now. Thanks for the heads up!

WOWSOME!!

How did he make it? How is that even possible?

Haha, thanks mate. Just hard work and iteration!

what is this, virtualization for ants?

no idea the point of this but seems at first pointless

Hi, Co-founder here. Thanks for the honesty. We have found that people are drawn to our service for one or two big reasons. The first is the ability to quickly share a test build of an app amongst the team for feedback and iteration. No downloads, no installs - just a URL.

The second is the ability to market your app to your clients or fans via your website or through Facebook, to get instant engagement (vs a banner/screenshot) to drive downloads. We've found it to be highly effective and the average app play is about 1:30. Hope that helps!

Imagine you write an app for a customer and want quick feedback without him having to install it on his device (if he even has one). Really helpful if you do freelancing for non-technical customers or big enterprises.

Could have been a bit more diplomatic, but I agree that I didn't think of either of the two uses that diesellaws mentioned. Couldn't let go of my desktop mindset.

I can't believe that Apple hasn't come up with some excuse to release the hounds. Few good deeds go unpunished with those guys.

Demo?

Hi, co-founder/designer here. The iPhone on our home page is actually a live demo of Prismadrop (using App.io). Appreciate the feedback - I will work to make it clearer in the future so everyone is aware it's a live demo.

I thought it was simply an animation. It would help if the frontpage told you what was going on.

If iOS apps can run in a browser absolutely any application for ant platform could run from within a browser window.

ok it's nice

but why?

I wish i could embed pictures... but: http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/289/9/1/why_not__by_r...

At this moment, I rather wish you could as well - but I really don't wish that everybody could. Some of the meme heavy github issues threads I've seen have led me to the conclusion that it would just make me cry.

I've seen QA teams or training teams run into difficulties with smartphone screen sharing. That's one use case where I guess this makes it easier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com