Hacker News Reader

Comment by apapli | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. The deciding factor for our family when buying a Mac or Windows 10 device for my wife’s small business was actually my need to upload iOS apps for review by apple.

I’m an after hours hobby developer, and use a windows desktop. It’s powerful and has all the tooling I require. And it supports all the games I want to play from the steam store.

So - I think apple will lose a little bit of business from people like me with this announcement, as I’m sure we would not have purchased a Mac when we did only a few months ago.

View on HN

The pricing makes this pointless for small businesses. $1/hour and minimum tenancy of 24 hours means each time you're updating your app you're spending $26. After 25 app updates you could own a brand new Mac Mini (assuming you never need to spend an extra day testing). Buying a used Mac makes even more sense.

MacStadium also already rents out Mac Minis starting at $59/mo.

I think the Amazon offering only makes sense for big corporations where (1) IT doesn't want to support macOS/exotic hardware on their network (2) it's easier to just charge to your your existing AWS billing than get a hardware purchase approved by your boss

Agree, but my needs are simple and I develop using expo.io. So once my app is published often minor changes can be pushed straight through to my app without App Store approvals. So it would be $26 per upload (ouch), but my “upload” may only be once every few months so I’d easily be ahead.

Alternatively, Apple might gain revenue from iOS and macOS builds becoming more accessible, allowing more small businesses to support their hardware.

Alternatively, Apple might gain revenue from iOS and macOS builds becoming more accessible

Wishful thinking: resurrect the xserve. Give me that 1U Apple appliance so I can stop stacking up Mac Minis (we have an incredibly non-trivial amount of iOS development happening across multiple divisions. Current Mac Mini count: 8)

There's a "blade" chassis in there somewhere. Something that takes a big stack of macbook air logic boards...

How are you developing iOS apps without xcode?

You only need it for compiling. There are plenty of cross platform frameworks that dont require to develop with xcode - and that's good in my opinion.

I built all my apps this way and faced the same problem as OP - so had to buy a Mac mini. It was the cheapest option ~8 years ago and I still use it today for the same purpose - just for compiling. I assume there are probably more of us.

How do you deal with platform specific bugs? What about testing?

About 50% of my MacOS usage is replicating bug reports from users. I don't know how I would do that without having one on my desk.

My needs are simple enough that the standard inclusions in expo.io work without complication. I could imagine more complex apps need a more involved dev setup but not in my case.

I really haven't faced many.. anything significant is usually fixed by the framework.

Maybe more iOS specific bugs are introduced when doing iOS specific development (like using iOS tooling and techniques).

how are you developing for ios without frequent compiling and testing?

Expo.io is good enough for my needs. Cross platform, just run it on my iPhone and and android simulator. Also, the way expo works is that not all updates need to go through the App Store approvals. I can quickly dev/test/release once I have the app container approved by the relevant store.

very cool

Maybe using something like Expo: https://expo.io/

Still need to run `xcodebuild` at produce a binary.

expo build:ios actually.

My only need for a Mac with expo is for the upload. The apk file is taken care of with the command above.

I have an iPhone I use for development and testing. Bonus points is that expo is cross platform, so I can publish to google play with the same single code base too.

that command invokes `xcodebuild` behind the scenes. I'm very familiar with expo, and it's fragility and warts.

I'm glad it's working for you, so far, but try to do anything slightly interesting and you'll have problems.

You’re spot on!

I’m always developing without xcode. Using expo I can write apps in react native on my desktop and vscode. Mac only required for the upload to the App Store.

expo.io

Those AWS images running OSX aren't free. Apple is definitely getting some royalty.

And that royalty is basically very low overhead. Keep in mind, hardware isn't software, and it does have a very high overhead.

Yeah, I was about to buy an Apple laptop since I also have been doing more and more cross-platform app development. Didn't like borrowing others' laptops and doing the laborious process of switching to my icloud profile just to upload some apps to the app store.

I'm definitely out now. I was never the target audience for Apple products anyways so maybe they're not too worried about this

Reply on news.ycombinator.com