Mac OS X Leopard and Xcode on iPad Pro | Hacker News Reader

Mac OS X Leopard and Xcode on iPad Pro

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172 pointstosh52 comments

trying to build ios apps via emulator on ipad looks more like an exercise in masochism or a cool trick than something "usable"

It would kinda make sense if the thing was cheap. But it's not so essentially you are paying a premium to have a shitty experience.

Doing hacky things on Apple products seems pointless in my opinion, because people paid their way into a walled garden that are now trying to escape?

Ish. It’s like you’re staying at this wonderful hotel that is very expensive and you absolutely love, but they refuse to allow wifi in the rooms. So you rig up your own hacky solution to get wifi anyway, hoping they won’t discover it and throw you out.

Feels like prisoners scratching on their walls. They won’t get to keep what they make.

Free your talent and creativity by putting your effort into open platforms.

Yeah, if only you could run what software you want on the harware you own instead of the manufacturer deciding that for you.

It’s a cool trick, but far from what I need.

I’d like to see Xcode —in full, and up to date— running on an iPad.

At that point, iPad will suddenly become a viable development platform, and one I would definitely consider using as a traveling system.

I have a feeling that this is what's coming, but they're taking their time to do it well. It would absolutely be the right kind of halo-app to promote (and engineer a good solution for) Apple OS convergence.

I suspect that we are in for a massive, top-to-bottom rewrite, cross-platform. Just not sure when it will hit the streets.

That's a really big job, and they can't afford many screw-ups.

It would definitely be very nice to have a keyboard attached to an iPad running Xcode, and when you want to run your iPad app it just launches on the device like when you’re developing a Mac app on the Mac. That would be excellent.

If it could launch on the device with a debugger in slide-over, that would be almost perfect.

If Jon Prosser is to be believed [0], your wish may come true in the next year or so.

[0]: https://twitter.com/jon_prosser/status/1252931201708560385

If you don't require Xcode UTM's Linux VMs will probably work for you as a development platform.

If you're going down that route, a VPS is an alternative (albeit more expensive) option. Blink shell is a great ssh/mosh client, and code-server makes for a great IDE.

Blink shell: https://blink.sh/

code-server: https://github.com/cdr/code-server

+1 for Blink and a good VPS.

For testing big builds or anything you want some power for, a good way to go when you need portability.

I do native Apple development. Xcode is required. Other tools (like AppCode) require Xcode tools, “under the hood.”

You’re right, but we’re talking about hacks here, right?

Technically you can compile iOS stuff on Linux or jailbreaked iOS, all you need is clang and apple toolchain. Examples: https://github.com/theos/theos/wiki or https://github.com/tpoechtrager/cctools-port/

The Surface Pro already does all this, like the comment above said - pointless hackery when you've paid your way into the walled garden yourself.

What’s happening here? Did the guy manage to install OS X on an iPad? Is this a supported feature or a hack?

It's running via https://github.com/utmapp/UTM, a qemu-based VM manager for iOS.

This is likely a PPC build of Mac OS X, running on the iPad through QEMU.

You're right https://twitter.com/jankais3r/status/1274047551281512449

Is there any particular reason it has to be PPC? Does QEMU emulate PPC more effectively than x86?

Probably because nobody has gotten OS X running on that version of QEMU.

I’m curious if there’s an iPad old enough to be supported by Xcode while also new enough to run UTM so you can actually use Xcode to build an app that could theoretically run directly on the device.

He appears to be using PPC Leopard. The iOS 2.2.1 SDK is the latest that can be made to work on that. https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/iphone-os-221-sdk-ppc

So, I'm going to go ahead and say it's impossible.

Tweet thread seemed to imply Xcode 3.1.4 was being used. I think you needed Xcode 3.2 to target the first gen iPad (which is Snow Leopard or higher as you mentioned). While UTM wouldn’t probably work on it, I did get Bochs running on the first gen iPad and booted Windows 95 (albeit it took 45min to start and the iPad felt like a hot plate), so I wouldn’t say impossible, just very very unlikely.

Wow I never knew the iOS build chain ever worked on PPC!

Well, it never officially did. From the Macintosh Garden page I linked:

> Despite Apple's claim that the SDK was available for Intel Macs only, some clever developers soon realized that all the frameworks and programs the SDK delivered were compiled as Universal (PPC/Intel) code while the compiler configuration files were ARM/Intel only. Moreover the installer checked for Intel architecture and denied installation on PPC Macs. Installing the .pkg archives manually and repairing the compiler configurations made the iPhone SDK run completely on PPC Macs.

Now it's a computer.

It's always been a general purpose computer, Apple just disallowed people to use it as such.

So because it runs Xcode in an emulator it’s a computer?

If we can get to the point of EMULATING a whole-@$$ computer on the device, maybe, just maybe, that device was slightly capable of running a compiler a looooooooooooooooong time ago.

There are compilers on the App Store, e.g. https://holzschu.github.io/a-Shell_iOS/ — however it’s compiling to WebAssembly and then running that, but the compiler is still native...

As said in another reply thread[0], I booted Windows 95 on a first gen ipad almost a decade ago using bochs, hence the sarcasm re: Xcode finally being the proverbial straw for GP.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579974

But to run a compiler you’d have to be able to see files, and as we all know, Apple-customers find things like that very, very scary.

Edit: I’m sarcastically referring to Apple’s original justification for not making files a concept on iOS, and thus I’m mocking Apple’s condescending judgement of its own users, not the actual users themselves. I thought that much would be obvious.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files_(Apple)

I am an “Apple customer” and I don’t find that very, very scary.

Still not a general purpose computer though.

Would loooooove to have an iPad Pro em for most of my stuff and have the ability to use a fast VM for development or other things that require me to have more control and finegrained window management

There needs to a shift in the way Xcode deploys apps or iOS accepts over WiFi app installs, only then can Xcode as an App rather than a VM help with development on the device you are actually using even if it cannibalises Mac sales.

iOS does accept Xcode builds over Wi-Fi, in case you weren’t already aware. I think that’s how most people work now, when they run the project in Xcode, it just launches on the iOS device wirelessly.

I know, but if Xcode runs on the same device they'd have to make some changes to target itself obviously though

I’m sooo ready to work on my web apps on my iPad Pro with the magic keyboard. It really feels like it could be an great developer experience if we could just run/build Node apps.

At this point, it would be straightforward for Apple to release a limited version of Xcode for iOS, and I expect them to do so, maybe even this year.

It would only use Swift and SwiftUI, and only target iOS.

Can we have a native ARM MacOS for iPad now, please?

Anyone here coding on their iPad? What tools are you using?

Why?

I'm not sure we'll ever see a full xcode release for iPad unless something drastic happens with the way mobile operating systems work. On your desktop you are king, you have the freedom to delete most every file or install any utility to any directory. Apple does not want you to have that autonomy on your devices and made sure from the start that you are unable to do anything unless they approve. I just don't see a marriage between these two worlds anytime soon.

A nice antitrust decision could convince them otherwise.

For a full release you are probably right, but a release that can only build iOS apps with swift and swiftui would be quite easy for them at this point.

It would be ironic if they will ship macOS Simulator for iOS.

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