Transmit for iOS | Hacker News Reader

Transmit for iOS

panic.com

91 pointscylo32 comments

I wish software would stop supporting FTP. It's a clear text protocol. Everything is sent in the clear text. Anyone on the wifi hotspot, any one listening at your ISP, all the way to your host knows exactly what you're uploading or downloading.

Someone asked for FTP support for our product and I said no way. We'd support SFTP, but not FTP, and neither really should anyone else. People don't want FTP, they want to transfer their files, but they're lazy and don't understand the security implications and they're going to keep using FTP until software changes.

You know that some banks and financial institutions still use FTP - they simply PGP/GPG encrypt the files.

I agree that no one should be using FTP anymore. However, this is a problem for server admins to solve, not Panic.

Almost all FTP programs have sFTP support built in (and I can't see FTP programs starting to call themselves SFTP programs). I know transmit for mac does support sftp (and a few other things like amazon s3, webdav), so despite this being an FTP program I would expect the iOS version to support sftp.

How about FTPS[1]?

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTPS

I would recommend against buying this app. Here's what will happen, as happens with every bit of Panic software -

1. You'll buy it

2. You'll do a quick test case - yup, it works

3. You'll love it because it works and looks damn good

4. Panic will never enhance the app

5. Panic will rarely, if ever, fix bugs in the app

5a. Panic will release "bug fixes" to reset their poor app store rating without actually fixing any bugs

5b. Panic will give you a craptastic recipe for clam chowder in their update notes

6. Panic will never properly support newer iOS versions or devices

7. Panic will release version 2.0 - MAYBE adding a trinket of functionality and possibly more bugs

I don't really know what to say, they've been updating and supporting Transmit forever.

Maybe they are/were different on Mac? The experience of owning Prompt for iOS would be essentially exactly what was described (it never really worked correctly, is still not updated for iOS 7, changelog was, in fact, a recipe for clam chowder, etc.), minus the final "2.0" bullet (which I would love to hear more about: what product did they do that with to cause that bullet to be on the list?).

(To be clear: I am personally entirely fine with the idea that software needs to be paid for, and wish they could charge for upgrades in a reasonable fashion so as to have a real business model; but the emphasis on form over function, with tons of marketing and descriptions about how pretty the software is when core functionality like terminal emulation never worked correctly, is really irksome.)

FYI, I've been on the Prompt 2.0 beta and it's seeming nearly baked: you may not have much longer to wait.

I have absolutely no interest in supporting developers who put form before function in the way that was done with Prompt 1.0, talking about a terminal that is "clean, crisp, and cheerful" instead of "fast, functional, and correct", nor do I have any faith that Prompt 2.0 is going to somehow work when Prompt 1.0 never did. I hear a lot about how awesome Panic is, but I just don't see it: they are selling an expensive terminal emulator that doesn't actually emulate a terminal correctly. I mostly use it at this point because so many people rave about Panic or recommend their products (even at XOXO last week) that I want to better understand the phenomenon, but as far as I can tell it mostly comes down to a marketing pattern of presenting an image that people can "buy into": in this case, the hipster-ish Apple-following development company that cares about the design of products in ways their competitors refuse... sufficiently that people buy these products so they can feel like part of that tribe, leading to recommendations that usually talk more about the company or their website than features or performance of their products. Regardless, the fact that Cydia recommended it to our large base of terminal-using developers for a long time by accident (an internal miscommunication) makes me very sad.

(After writing this, I realize you are probably joking, in that Prompt 2.0 will soon exist and thereby the bullet points will be complete, but on the oft chance that you were serious I have left the previous paragraph ;P.)

> the fact that Cydia recommended it to our large base of terminal-using developers for a long time by accident

Do you have more I can read about this? That is really interesting!

Someone other than me updated the web pages in Cydia that walk people through how to set up and use OpenSSH on their device (which were sort of required, as MobileTerminal's upstream had jumped the shark), and I didn't really think through while reviewing the updates that we were essentially "recommending" Prompt--more than just acknowledging its existence--by linking to it from our pages. It ended up on the page because I do use Prompt for the aforementioned masochistic reasons, and as a lot of other people do when people ask me about terminal emulators I often do list it, so it he person doing documentation naturally recommended it, but essentially funneling all of our users to go buy that product as part of their device setup, given that Prompt really doesn't do a very good job, and some of the most critical software we use (like Cycript) isn't well supported by it, was a mistake. These pages never included the tracking code I used to have (the tracking code that for a while caused me to have the >2% of all objects stored on S3 that I have talked about on Hacker News before), so I half-sadly and half-thankfully have no clue how many people were referred to go look at Prompt.

A different perspective – Coda + Diet Coda have been fantastic for testing sites on iOS devices. Coda 2 and Transmit are two of my favourite & most used apps and I've had few issues. When I have, their support has been superb including feature requests - they have a great stackoverflow support site: https://www.panic.com/qa/.

Looking forward to the imminent Coda 2.5 update.

What the hell? I never knew they had a Q&A site. Their Coda help page told me to ask question on their Google Group.

My experience with using some panic software (especially OSX Trasnmit) is that it's been stable and supported with new versions for the last few years. Same with Unison.

They do charge for major version changes, but I don't see how this is any different from any software company that makes software. The major versions go on for a few years, and they offer discount pricing for upgrading.

I share a bit of your frustration, but I still use Transmit because I like it best. Just be wary of how Transmit caches file listings, I often need to manually refresh it to see file changes.

I wish this wasn't true, but "Prompt" followed this pattern exactly.

Prompt has been my experience with them on iOS as well. It still works just as good as the day I bought it. But for some reason seeing the old iOS keyboard boils my blood. It's a weird nag, but my soul confirms it's legitimacy.

Same with Diet Coda.

Not sure what this is referring to. I have Transmit for Mac.

It is pretty much bug free, and works great (its my go to FTP program). There aren't really any features I wish it had that doesn't already. (Really with an FTP program, if it transfers and downloads files correctly (and has an easy way to edit files in an external editor) what else should it do...

I'll just chime in to join the chorus - their software is top-notch, Transmit for the Mac especially. I've paid for it, but it's been so long ago - and so many versions ago, I can't really remember when that was! It could have honestly have been 10+ years ago. They've never asked for anything more from me. Thank you, Panic!

I just downloaded an update to Transmit. They update it. I am not sure where you are coming from at all.

Transmit on the Mac is updated. I doubt they don't care -- this is more likely a problem of limited resources.

I've suffered with Filezilla for a long time. I say suffer, but it was great.. until I found Transmit.

Transmit has streamlined so many processes for me now, some by milliseconds, some by minutes, some by hours. I don't have to think if Filezilla will throw a fit over something, I just let Transmit do it's thing.

I'm sure you might have your personal reasons to complain but all i'm seeing here are good things from other users.

10$, the developer in me is glad that other indie companies take such a move and don't participate in the race to the bottom of app pricings.

What a weird world, where giving a networked device the ability to upload, download, and manage files is described as a "super power". Crazy.

Any views on the new Panic Sync [1] functionality being rolled out with this app?

Presumably entrusting your passwords/keys to a third party is a bad idea, regardless of any assurances given?

[1] http://panic.com/sync/

Will this allow me to remotely handle FTP transfers from say a server to my laptop while I am at work? Sometimes I would like to have control of transmit from my phone

Wait so will this allow me to download music to my phone from my ahem cloud server?

edit: e.g. circumventing plugging my phone into my computer, launching itunes, etc.

You may be interested in Subsonic[1] and an iOS client like iSub[2]. That lets you download music to your phone from your ahem cloud server. Also to any other computer. The Android app[3] is nice as well.

[1] http://www.subsonic.org/ [2] http://isubapp.com/ [3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sourceforg...

I would also recommend checking out "StreamToMe"[1] and its server/transcoding app "ServeToMe". The client app works on iOS and Mac, while the server app works on both mac and windows.

The good support for most audio and video formats (including the ability to stream the original file or transcode it to reduce bit-rate) and the dead simple set up are great. I am quite impressed with how it works, and find it much easier to work with than Subsonic and other Java based media.

[1] http://zqueue.com/streamtome/

(not affiliated, just a fan)

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