Possible to execute, not develop, programs on iPad?

Hello,
I'm trying to implement a workflow in which I develop programs on my laptop, then the children use them on an iPad. However, I haven't been able to make the iPad side work at all. Even if I parachute straight onto the webpage where each particular published project lives, neither iOS Safari nor iOS Firefox will load the page to the point one can tap on the green flag.

I know Jens wrote back in August that iOS has become a subpar platform for Snap https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/i-can-t-find-the-media-library/770/10?u=janmo BUT what I find most puzzling is this: iPhones can do it, newer iPads can't. Specifically, 2018 model iPads running iOS 13 fail, while a 2016 iPhone SE running iOS 12 works, and a 2017 iPhone 7 running iOS 13 also works.

Has anybody managed to run, not develop, Snap programs on an iPad browser? It doesn't have to be tablet Safari, any browser would do.

Thanks very much

Two things:

  1. It's still the same situation, I - frankly - suspect Apple of sabotaging Safari to discourage web apps on iOS in order to force developers into writing native apps. If you watch this video from 9 (!) years ago it shows me demoing Snap's underlying Morphic kernel on mobile Safari on an iPad v1 (!), and it just worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUDNpl0YJqA&t=619s. Also this video from 7(!) years ago shows me demoing exactly the workflow you're looking for: Make a project on a laptop, share it, and open it in mobile Safari on an iPad (v2, really old), and it worked fluidly and flawlessly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU5PmfSMsDw. This same workflow is still possible on Android devices, but not on most iOS devices, so go figure :frowning:.
  1. Help is on the way. Over the past months I've re-architected Snap's Morphic kernel to consume significantly less memory and load much larger projects much faster in order to address Chromium's inherent instability. I'm now at a point where my development (pre-alpha) version is able to run ("play back") my test suite of 530 projects, and I'm pleased to note that so far this seems to work much, much better on iOS and Safari in general, with almost no noticeable difference to Firefox and Chrome. I don't have a newer iPad myself, so I can't test that, and editing projects is not yet ready in the development version. I am hoping to be able to put out a public pre-alpha dev version that will let you play back shared projects within the next few weeks.

Jens, thanks very much for the prompt and informative reply. Especially given that I asked this question under the "Bug" category, when it was clear from the beginning that this isn't a Snap bug at all |-:

Indeed, something smells funny in the tablet iOS ecosystem. It can't be that iOS versions running on old hardware succeed while newer/current iOS running on much more powerful, 64-bit iPads fails. Snap hasn't changed its resource requirements to any extent that could explain that. And I guess that the only explanation for my being able to play projects back (messily, but still successfully) on iPhones is the fork into separate phone iOS and tablet iOS Apple did a while ago.

Your Morphic rewrite sounds like a big-return project that must be demanding very close familiarity with that JS jungle. Preliminary results sound quite impressive. Thanks for all the great work you've done and are doing!