Ask HN: iOS dev on a hackintosh -- possible or not? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: iOS dev on a hackintosh -- possible or not?

10 pointsyid13 comments

I've tried Googling this, but the answers range from outdated to FUD. Having invested a fair amount in building a souped up desktop, the prospect of spending more money makes me unhappy. Yes, a Macbook is relatively inexpensive, but I don't need new hardware, thanks.

With a legal copy of Lion, can I develop iOS apps that will make it into the app store? Does anyone have any experience using this route? What about if I just want to sideload PhoneGap bundles?

Any advice appreciated, thanks!

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You can develop/submit/get approved iOS apps using a hackintosh.

However if you really want to develop iOS apps for fun/money/education/whatever I think this is something you need to be pragmatic about. Sure the requirement to use Mac OS, that can only be officially used on Mac Hardware, that is expensive to buy, requires you to have another computer, etc can be very frustrating and hard to swallow. But you need to put those ideals aside and concentrate on your real goal.

As a number of people have said when developing iOS apps you don't have the luxury of slipping too far behind the Mac OS updates. Apple only accepts app submissions from certain Xcode/iOS SDK versions which require certain Mac OS versions. Those requirements are constantly advancing. So it won't be long before you get very frustrated with the hackintosh update process.

You will probably also be learning many new things at once. Mac OS, Xcode, Objective C, Cocoa Touch, mobile dev, etc. So adding hackintosh maintenance into this mix is the last thing you need.

The only hardware requirement for iOS dev is that it's an Intel Mac. I personally use a Mac Mini and it's more than capable. After all you are developing something that needs to run within the limitations of a mobile device.

Have fun!

You'd need to get Slow Leopard, since a lot of ios stuff requires you to update your system to make use of new functionality.

If you're doing this as a business, do not go the hackintosh route- you won't get any level of stability and it will suck to work on one for 8+ hrs/day with bad driver support. Just buy a used mac mini on Craigslist or something - in the long run it won't be worth your time to cheap out here.

Out of curiosity, do you have any experience with which pieces of hardware cause problems? For iOS dev, I can only forsee requiring functional display and Ethernet drivers.

TBH, my real problem was that IOS development (with new sdks) basically requires you to keep upgrading your macos to the latest version, which was irritating since you needed to do it often and since for someone with a hackintosh, its not trivial. Even with functional display and ethernet drivers, if your mouse/trackpad doesn't work well, or your music doesn't work it kinda sucks (IMHO).

Most often: video, network, AHCI, and power management-related drivers. It's really not worth it.

Before I switched to Apple hardware, I developed one app in a VMWare VM that was successfully approved and is currently in the app store.

A previous comment of my own that might lead you down the right path: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262569

If you are going to go fulltime dev for iOS might as well buy some kind of mac to run it on, perhaps see if it can be done on a mac mini or buy refurbished to save some money http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=M...

You say it is relatively inexpensive, so if you have that disposable money you won't have to worry about getting locked out later for some reason if hackintoshs are found and banned.

If you are doing it for fun though might as well try the hackintosh if you already have the hardware, though it isn't condoned by apple.

I would vastly prefer a $130 investment in an OS over spending more on even a used Mac Mini. Part of me finds the whole Mac-hardware-only for iOS dev abhorrent, but you simply must develop for ios these days. Thanks.

Abhorrent or not, its the cost of entry. Dont forget that you will also need to spend $99 for the developers license and if you decide to incorporate, its going to cost the filing/organizational/franchise fees as well.

But all of these expenses pale in comparison with the cost of your time if you can otherwise making over $50 an hour(think $100+k a year)

With a Hackintosh its imperative that you have hardware that is pretty specific, if you expect just any hardware to work flawlessly youre in for a bag of hurt. Thats why most Hackintosh guides provide you a list of "supported" motherboards, videocards, etc. Anything outside of this list and you will face difficulties with sound, wireless network, u name it

Not with Lion.

The only way to get Lion right now is from the Mac Dev Program. It is a beta OS. It runs beta versions of Xcode. Apps built with beta versions of Xcode (4.1) will fail to validate when you try and submit them to the App Store. If you try and install Xcode 3.x or Xcode 4.0.x, Installer.app will fail and complain about the OS being unsupported.

Just get a secondhand mini somewhere. They're cheap — much more so than your time.

You can trick it into installing by changing SystemVersion.plist but it's a dirty hack. Xcode did seem to launch fine though afterwards (I only used it to activate Developer mode on my iPad)

I've heard that it's impossible to submit apps that have been compiled using Lion to the Mac App Store. I'm not sure if the same is true for the iOS App Store, you might want to look into that before going any further.

Try https://build.phonegap.com/docs/ios-builds

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