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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 e

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!