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I have recently discovered a web application which allows you to run iOS apps in the browser. Said application is Pieceable Viewer.

I was curious about how it works and is able to do its job so I did a quick google search and found a rather short answer on Quora:

It looks like they are running multiple instances of the iPhone Simulator and piping it through VNC. They've also hooked (method swizzled) a number of messages such as openURL: which would escape out of the current application.

This was interesting, but I wonder if anyone could give a bit more info on how exactly they are able to have multiple instances of the iOS Simulator open and being able to pipe each one through VNC.

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If you still don't get an answer here, I'd say you could ask a mod to migrate the question to stackoverflow as your question is programming-related. Yet, I know this is not fully compliant with the scope of SO and may get closed there... – JMax Jan 5 '12 at 15:29
How would I contact a mod to do that? – Joshua Jan 6 '12 at 16:09
Click on the flag link on the bottom of your question and Select "It needs moderator attention". He or she will migrate the question or add a comment if he/she thinks this is not relevant – JMax Jan 6 '12 at 16:21
@Joshua Thanks for flagging this question but I don't think it is worth migrating. I am almost certain it would closed on SO. Sorry – Barry♦ Jan 6 '12 at 18:23
@Barry No problem, just wanted to get your advice. Thanks! – Joshua Jan 6 '12 at 18:28

1 Answer

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There are a few similar applications, like Amazon Test Drive, and I think all use the same technique. As Amazon announced, Test Drive run your Android application in an EC2 virtual machines. So as Pieceable Viewer: they may, in the easiest way, create multiple VMs each run an iOS simulator. Output is forward to your browser, using VNC or any similar protocol.

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I thought it would be something like that, could you provide any more detail, like: How are they able to set up Virtual Machines on demand and then selectively pipe VNC to your browser? – Joshua Jan 6 '12 at 6:59
@Joshua Pieceable's going (partially) open source so the mistery will be revealed. Though it's not hard to imagine how they might have done it. – Richard Borcsik Aug 5 '12 at 9:21
@RichardBorcsik That's great news! :) – Joshua Aug 5 '12 at 10:56

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