6 ms·

XCode may cost you 0$, but you have to buy a Mac to use it. And those things are >0$ in most cases.

Aaargh20318 8y ago
You need a Mac anyway, and the costs of a Mac is peanuts compared to the costs of a developer.
jessemillar 8y ago
While I understand your point, I would gently argue that to develop a truly great macOS or iOS app, you somewhat need to live in the Apple ecosystem to understand the design guidelines and quality that Apple customers have come to expect.
- asdff 8y ago
  I bet the most downloaded apps these days are ground up cross platform and identical on every platform, e.g. steam, spotify, and web browsers. Relying on proprietary apple features that you have to clumsily port over to another OS would waste a lot of your time as a dev. You'd probably do your best troubleshooting on a cheap, under powered hackintosh than a model year macbook pro, to be honest.
  - jessemillar 8y ago
    Fair point. I tend to not like those cross-platform apps because of their generally-degraded performance so my previous comment showed a bit of my underlying bias.
- virtualritz 8y ago
  Yes. But parent didn't contest that. They rather made the point that you have to pay to "live" in that ecosystem. MacOS is officially only supported on Apple hardware ... So it's not free and the fact that XCode is is therefore a moot point to that line of reasoning.
philistine 8y ago
Instead of having Xcode be available on PCs, which we all know are free to own. Yeah, right.
- EthanV2 8y ago
  I guess the point is you might already own a PC, and you could use that for developing Android apps, for example. But if you also want to use Xcode and develop iOS apps as well then you have to buy a Mac.
  - georgespencer 8y ago
    If that is the point it's not a very good one.
  - mcphage 8y ago
    > you might already own a PC [...] if you also want to use Xcode and develop iOS apps as well then you have to buy a Mac. You might already own a Mac.
    - mdorazio 8y ago
      And if you own a Mac it costs $0 to develop for any other platform. See the imbalance here?
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        No, it costs 100 euros to get a proper Windows license.
        mdorazio 8y ago
        No, you don't need a Windows license to develop for Windows. That's the whole point here. You can code and compile binaries for Windows, Linux, Android, etc. from many IDEs and virtually any platform under the sun. You can code and compile binaries for Apple products from exactly one IDE and exactly one platform: Apple's.

Aaargh20318 8y ago

You need a Mac anyway, and the costs of a Mac is peanuts compared to the costs of a developer.

While I understand your point, I would gently argue that to develop a truly great macOS or iOS app, you somewhat need to live in the Apple ecosystem to understand the design guidelines and quality that Apple customers have come to expect.

asdff 8y ago
I bet the most downloaded apps these days are ground up cross platform and identical on every platform, e.g. steam, spotify, and web browsers. Relying on proprietary apple features that you have to clumsily port over to another OS would waste a lot of your time as a dev. You'd probably do your best troubleshooting on a cheap, under powered hackintosh than a model year macbook pro, to be honest.
- jessemillar 8y ago
  Fair point. I tend to not like those cross-platform apps because of their generally-degraded performance so my previous comment showed a bit of my underlying bias.
virtualritz 8y ago
Yes. But parent didn't contest that. They rather made the point that you have to pay to "live" in that ecosystem. MacOS is officially only supported on Apple hardware ... So it's not free and the fact that XCode is is therefore a moot point to that line of reasoning.

philistine 8y ago

Instead of having Xcode be available on PCs, which we all know are free to own. Yeah, right.

EthanV2 8y ago
I guess the point is you might already own a PC, and you could use that for developing Android apps, for example. But if you also want to use Xcode and develop iOS apps as well then you have to buy a Mac.
- georgespencer 8y ago
  If that is the point it's not a very good one.
- mcphage 8y ago
  > you might already own a PC [...] if you also want to use Xcode and develop iOS apps as well then you have to buy a Mac. You might already own a Mac.
  - mdorazio 8y ago
    And if you own a Mac it costs $0 to develop for any other platform. See the imbalance here?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      No, it costs 100 euros to get a proper Windows license.
      - mdorazio 8y ago
        No, you don't need a Windows license to develop for Windows. That's the whole point here. You can code and compile binaries for Windows, Linux, Android, etc. from many IDEs and virtually any platform under the sun. You can code and compile binaries for Apple products from exactly one IDE and exactly one platform: Apple's.