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by lstamour 1840 days ago
If you can't afford to cross-browser test, and you don't have a Mac, I'm not sure why you're building an extension for a Mac-only browser then? Someone has to test it on a Mac, register for a certificate with Apple, etc. In the end, buying a Mac is the easy part?

And there are services like https://www.browserstack.com/docs/automate/selenium/add-plug... where you can basically rent Mac VMs on cheap monthly plans. Or GitHub Actions, as I pointed to earlier, has a free tier with free minutes on an automated Mac terminal.
1 comments
contriban 1840 days ago
I can’t believe what I’m reading.

On one side Apple says they now offer a compatible API, on the other side you’re telling me dropping a minimum of $800 on a computer (+$100 annually) to release a free extension is the easy part.

BrowserStack would be a good solution to test it, but unfortunately you also need a lot of preparation and XCode-specific knowledge to even get to a testable point, which you don’t get unless you own a Mac.

The browsers that Apple claims to be compatible with don’t require anything more than WinZip.

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lstamour 1839 days ago
Apple added requirements for their store to publish extensions, yes. They also added more privacy prompts. If you don’t test on MacOS in Safari, how would you know if your extension works correctly?

Why not ask Apple to release macOS for any computer like Windows on x86? Why not ask for Safari to be published for and API compatible with Windows as on macOS? Why not ask Apple to ship Windows since mac-only APIs would be problematic?

Fact is, Apple requiring a Mac to publish for a Mac-only browser is not a problem. It’s not even true. You can code sign for Mac from Linux[1], as I understand it. Worst case, a third-party service will step in to handle packaging and publishing the way we already do for cross-platform native apps and yet Apple will continue to expect devs to test on their Apple devices.

I can run Firefox or Chrome on my Mac so it’s not like I’m missing out if you choose to not develop an extension for Safari and test it in Safari. I feel like you’re arguing that testing isn’t required if you have the right web standards, which is pretty much always false when there are privacy or other implementation details that vary by browser…

1. https://github.com/zhlynn/zsign

2. Apple’s codesign tool is open source: https://opensource.apple.com/source/security_systemkeychain/...

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