Not what I was hoping for... – Blink Shell 14: Legacy Review

I was not a Mosh user before trying Blink, so I didn’t know what to expect. I suppose what I was hoping for was SSH but always-connected, like 30 seconds after switching OR 3 days. You can get that by using Screen or tmux (as you can with SSH) and there is some integration for connecting to a session when you log in, but it’s pretty basic. What you get out of the box is a blue banner across the top of the screen that displays a clock that starts ticking once you hit a key telling you how long its been since it saw the server. Auto reconnect? Nah... don’t want to go and reinvent typing ;-) Just a confusing escape sequence you can’t actually type on a native iOS keyboard. It’s Ctrl+^. Yeah, they actually used the most common abbreviation for the control key as their escape sequence (And the character you end a sentence with)! So it’s actually Ctrl+Shift+6+Period Worse there is enough lag when entering the sequence that you have time to try something else, so unless it’s the last sequence you try it won’t register. And since there is nothing you can do with one of these disconnected sessions other than recycling the terminal, why even bother? Just tell me connections X,Y and, Z got disconnected. So that leaves us with a lag free SSH replacement... I do mostly systems administration from my terminal, I type a small command and look at lots of output, and I refine... so the tricks Mosh uses to keep interaction fluid are lost on me. Perhaps if you are using an interactive editor remotely to program while riding in an elevator? Compiling C++ on the subway? Don’t use a version control system... I’m really not sure. Even aligning themes is a clumsy process involving pasting a github link.
Review by Buddy Lingus on Blink Shell 14: Legacy.