Mac OSX 10.5.4 Now in Beta!

When is CrossBrowserTesting going to have Macs? Are you going to support Mac OSX? When are the macs coming? Will you ever support Safari on the Mac?

Ok, Ok, we get it. You want to be able to test your web sites on the Macintosh platform also. This by far has been one of the most requested additions to CrossBrowserTesting from you, our customers. We are eager to announce that Mac OSX 10.5.4 is now available as a Beta and ready for your testing!

This project has consumed our time and energy for the last 3 months. We had several goals for the project:
- Provide a consistent feel for launching the Mac configuration as we have for the other OSs
- Continue to provide unrestricted administrative access to the OS so you can install software, etc. Do not provide just a 'dumbed down' guest account, but full control.
- Have the configuration revert to a 'clean' configuration after each user, so your browser history is deleted and any changes to the OS are removed before the next user accesses the configuration.

These goals proved more challenging than we thought. Due to software licensing restrictions Apple places on running the Mac OS in virtualized environments, we had to get creative with our implementation. We were finally able to make it all work and deliver what you have been asking for. Though the technology is very different in the backend, we hope the user experience will be on par with our other configuration offerings. For instance, you have full control over the OS and are not locked into a limited user account. You also have the security of knowing that as soon as you log off, that session is destroyed and there is no trace of your session remaining for others to "snoop" through.

This is a Beta... we have numerous moving parts integrated to provide this solution, and we will be monitoring it closely to look for issues. We will try to resolve these as quickly as possible.

Thanks,
Ken, Mike, and Tony
CrossBrowserTesting.com