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Comment by rradu | Hacker News Reader

"Please make it possible to develop iOS apps on something other than a Mac."

A few months ago I wrote a quick HTML5 app and when it came time to port it over to a proper iOS app, I found out Xcode only worked on Macs. And I'm a PC guy.

What did I end up doing? I made it into an Android app.

I'm sure I'm not the only casual app developer that didn't end up submitting to the App Store just because it was too much of a hassle. There's certainly no shortage of apps in the Store, but I think mine could have been better than at least 40% of them.

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I don't develop for smartphones(yet) but this is something Apple should consider. MBP are too damn expensive for developing world, and even in the developed countries, many people don't own a MBP by choice. When people who don't own a MBP develop for the smartphones and its time to go native, they end up going Android even when they wanted to do it for IOS or for both.

I am not very familiar with iOS development infrastructure but since MacBook is BSD based, it should be possible to at least make it run on Linux and FreeBSD.

You don't have to buy a MacBook Pro. A MacMini works just fine for development, and it's half the price.

> since MacBook is BSD based, it should be possible to at least make it run on Linux and FreeBSD

Mac OS X has a UNIX foundation, not the MacBook - you can run Windows on your MacBook if you really want to. A lot of the low-level system libraries are open source (http://opensource.apple.com) and can be compiled for Linux/FreeBSD. I highly doubt they're going to do the necessary work to port over the development tools and UI that sit on top of that, though.

Would it be nice? For some people - possibly. Is it ever going to happen? Nope.

I develop iOS apps on a $300 Dell mini 10v (hackintosh). It's slower than my MBP at work, but it's just as capable.

To be honest, an iPhone is too expensive for most of the developing world. Rarely anyone has an iPhone in thailand, and they're looked as luxury items like a luxury car.

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