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It's absolutely laughable that Apple forces people to buy a Mac in order to compile iOS applications. My company recently started using Xamarin, and to our surp

It's absolutely laughable that Apple forces people to buy a Mac in order to compile iOS applications. My company recently started using Xamarin, and to our surprise we can't run automated builds for iOS on our Linux servers. It's really weird. We don't have any macs anywhere, so it looks like we're going to have to get an overpriced mac just for this single build.

pasta 9y ago
We used second hand Mac minis for this. For around $150 we could compile the iOS apps that we developed on Windows. Via something like TeamViewer we could see the result on the mac and automated builds were done via TeamCity.
bluedino 9y ago
>> It's absolutely laughable that Apple forces people to buy a Mac in order to compile iOS applications. It also allows them to control the development environment which makes for a much better experience than say, Android dev.
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  I just want some command line tools that perform a build. They exist for Mac. There ought to be a Linux port. I don't care about development experience.
makecheck 9y ago
Since iOS is still essentially macOS, albeit a heavily customized version, making iOS tools work on Macs ought to be wayyyyy easier than releasing them for an ecosystem as different as Windows. They may benefit from developers buying machines but the Mac market is still much bigger than developer purchases. Many iOS technologies are either identical or similar to Mac SDKs, enticing developers familiar with their machines to create Mac versions. Mac versions are useful for development too: even if you are targeting iOS for example, it is often possible to create a "Mac game" of your iOS game and test it way more efficiently by running directly on the Mac without a simulator. This approach is not "absolutely laughable", it's actually just about the smartest thing they could do.
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  We use Xamarin. For most code changes the iOS testing is absolutely trivial, since it uses the exact same code running against other platforms. All I want is to compile, it's understandable that they want to keep their IDEs mac-only.
- martinald 9y ago
  Well, fair enough. But it's really the last holdout of the Ballmer-era platform lock in going. Even MS makes a load of dev tools for Mac and Linux now. I'm not saying they need to port XCode to Windows. What I am saying they could and probably should do is make it easier to CI iOS apps on Linux (some of the build tooling, as a start) and maybe even allow OS X to be bought & installed trivially on VMWare etc - even as a "developer edition". It would make so many Devs lives easier rather than all these ridiculous and unstable Mac mini hacks everyone ends up doing for iOS dev. I genuinely don't think a OS X for VMWare would tarnish the brand or margins. It's just a EULA change!

pasta 9y ago

We used second hand Mac minis for this. For around $150 we could compile the iOS apps that we developed on Windows. Via something like TeamViewer we could see the result on the mac and automated builds were done via TeamCity.

bluedino 9y ago

>> It's absolutely laughable that Apple forces people to buy a Mac in order to compile iOS applications. It also allows them to control the development environment which makes for a much better experience than say, Android dev.

tokenizerrr 9y ago
I just want some command line tools that perform a build. They exist for Mac. There ought to be a Linux port. I don't care about development experience.

makecheck 9y ago

Since iOS is still essentially macOS, albeit a heavily customized version, making iOS tools work on Macs ought to be wayyyyy easier than releasing them for an ecosystem as different as Windows. They may benefit from developers buying machines but the Mac market is still much bigger than developer purchases. Many iOS technologies are either identical or similar to Mac SDKs, enticing developers familiar with their machines to create Mac versions. Mac versions are useful for development too: even if you are targeting iOS for example, it is often possible to create a "Mac game" of your iOS game and test it way more efficiently by running directly on the Mac without a simulator. This approach is not "absolutely laughable", it's actually just about the smartest thing they could do.

tokenizerrr 9y ago
We use Xamarin. For most code changes the iOS testing is absolutely trivial, since it uses the exact same code running against other platforms. All I want is to compile, it's understandable that they want to keep their IDEs mac-only.
martinald 9y ago
Well, fair enough. But it's really the last holdout of the Ballmer-era platform lock in going. Even MS makes a load of dev tools for Mac and Linux now. I'm not saying they need to port XCode to Windows. What I am saying they could and probably should do is make it easier to CI iOS apps on Linux (some of the build tooling, as a start) and maybe even allow OS X to be bought & installed trivially on VMWare etc - even as a "developer edition". It would make so many Devs lives easier rather than all these ridiculous and unstable Mac mini hacks everyone ends up doing for iOS dev. I genuinely don't think a OS X for VMWare would tarnish the brand or margins. It's just a EULA change!