Testing web application on Mac/Safari when I don't own a Mac

Question

Having been caught out recently when a web site I launched displayed perfectly on IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari on Windows but was corrupted when viewed using Safari on the Mac (by a potential customer), I need to start testing how my sites look when viewed on a Mac.

Problem is, I don't own a Mac.

I've tried BrowsrCamp, which claims to provide VNC access to a Mac with lots of browsers installed, but after finding it unreliable (so far, it's worked 1 day in the last 5) I need another solution.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Unfortunately you cannot run MacOS X on anything but a genuine Mac.

MacOS X Server however can be run in VMWare. A stopgap solution would be to install it inside a VM. But you should be aware that MacOS X Server and MacOS X are not exactly the same, and your testing is not going to be exactly what the user has. Not to mention the $499 price tag.

Simplest way is to buy yourself a cheap mac mini or a laptop with a broken screen used on ebay, plug it onto your network and access it via VNC to do your testing.

Answer 2

These sites may help: Browsera

Answer 3

I have to agree with Eric: Get a Mac. You can get a fairly cheap mini ($699) new OR you can something older and used from ebay, powermax.com or macofalltrades.com of varying prices. If you do go the used route i would make sure you get an intel mac with at least a 1.25ghz. This is simply because Apple tends to depercate old hardware every couple major or major.x OS versions and a lot of times they wont backport Safari to older OS versions. But those specs should keep you good for several years i would think without spending too much.

On a side note - you might wan tto go all out and just switch to a mac as your primary dev workstation. Its a alot easier to install/upgrade a LAMP stack on (im assuming youre not doing .Net development or something else primary IIS based). The low end mac mini is fine for this. I have a last gen one as my primary workstation - granted i added a larger hardrive and maxed out the ram but its also my personal machine so that was added more for CS apps and enjoying media than it was for dev.

Answer 4

If it's a major concern to start doing a lot of testing on a Mac, then I would definitely suggest buying a second hand Mac, or perhaps building a Hackintosh. The former gets you up and running quickly, the latter gives you a lot of power for the same price.

For just the odd piece of testing, running OS X in VMWare on your current PC is a cheaper option.

Answer 5

Litmus may help you. It will take screenshots of your webpage(s) in a wide variety of browsers so you can make sure that your site works in all of them. A free alternative (Litmus is a paid service) is Browsershots, but you do get what you pay for. (In some screenshots that Browershots returns, the browser hasn't yet finished loading the webpage...)

Of course, as other people have suggested, buying a Mac is also a good solution (and may be better, depending on the kind of testing you need to do), because then you can test your website yourself in any of the browsers that run under Mac OS X or Windows.