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Comment by ensmotko | Hacker News Reader

Another thing that bothers me with development for iOS is that you need apple hardware and software. I can't develop an iOS on my Linux machine (I've tried running OSX in virtualbox, but it's slow and not to mention illegal).

I really wish Apple would make their platform a little more available. Lowering the $100 yearly fee would be a good start...

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If you can't even afford $100 a year you probably can afford anything you would need to develop for the platform (e.g. a mac).

If $100 a year would allow me to develop iOS apps on my Linux laptop I'd be fine with that. But $100 a year + paying for overpriced apple hardware doesn't sound appealing.

Exercise for people who think Macs are overpriced: find a machine with a solid state drive, excellent battery life, well built case, and high quality keyboard and trackpad for substantially less than the price of a Macbook Air.

(writing this from 15" early 2013 rMBP) You can build a hackintosh with comparable specs for much cheaper than the equivalent Mac Pro, but the laptop space is no-contest

Sorry, should have specified laptop. The Mac Pro is a terrible way to purchase raw computing power - it's there mostly for OSX-based media professionals.

Just remove well-built case and high-quality keyboard from that list and I can buy a laptop with much, much more power for the same price as a Macbook Air.

Lenovo Thinkpad.

And that is where the line divides. Android users are like you... they don't want to pay for software and go for cheaper hardware when they can.

I'm a Linux and Android user. My Android phone wasn't any cheaper than an iPhone and I can most certainly afford any Apple hardware I want. I also don't use Linux because I'm cheap, I use Linux because I love it. The hardware was exactly what I wanted too.

I don't develop for iOS because I don't want to own a Mac. I (as a long-time Linux user) find OS X incredibly frustrating.

There's also absolutely no reason to force developers to use a particular brand of hardware or a particular operating system to develop for a particular phone.

There's also absolutely no reason to force developers to use a particular brand of hardware or a particular operating system to develop for a particular phone.

Well, it costs money for Apple to support development on Windows and Linux platforms. Who's going to port Xcode and the simulator to run on those platforms? How many different types of Windows and Linux configurations are out there?

> Well, it costs money for Apple to support development on Windows and Linux platforms

The cost of doing that pales in comparison to what they are making off of iOS. If they can afford to keep developing iTunes for Windows, they can afford to port their other software. For some reason, I don't think Apple will go out of business if they give it a shot.

> How many different types of Windows and Linux configurations are out there?

So target the most prevalent ones. I don't know about all of the various configurations on linux, but it's really not so bad with Windows - just target Windows 7 or higher, and you should be good. Nobody is saying it needs to look nice or even look like a native program; we just want something we can work with, even if it looks like dog shit.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy something when you are only developing for it and not actually planning on using it. I sometimes develop software for Windows, and I hate running it, so I won't purchase a copy of it. But that shouldn't prevent me from developing for it.

So advocating piracy are we?

There are ways to develop for Windows on other OSes without piracy (e.g. WINE).

I really doubt the quality of WINE for such purposes.

No, I'm saying that I cross compile and have others test things out. I develop mostly with C++ and rarely need to use OS-level APIs that aren't included in things like Qt or Boost.

To speak nothing of whether or not that is actually true, what is the problem with opting for cheaper hardware?

XCode's requirements are pretty modest. Get a second-hand Mac Mini or something (you may want to add memory to it).

> you need apple hardware and software

It's worse than that, I'm afraid. You need the absolute latest of both.

My perfectly fine Macbook from 2008 should be more than adequate for developing iOS apps. It's a core2 duo with 2GB of RAM. I mean, these aren't exactly the days of Pentium 60 vs. XT 8088.

Yet the max OS I can upgrade to is Lion. And that's with going through Snow Leopard first. And who knows how much longer Xcode will work on Lion.

"5 years old" is a pretty far cry from "absolute latest". My 2008 Core2 Duo MacBook, upgraded to 5GB of RAM and an SSD, works like a champ for iPhone development. I don't understand this complaint.

at best you can run OS X Lion. That's it. Before you even get to that, though, you have to upgrade to Snow Leopard for silly arbitrary reasons.

OS X is currently on Mountain Lion, going to Mavericks real soon now. I would not count on Xcode running on Lion for any real length of time now. After that, you're 100% screwed.

Contrast that to Windows XP, where I can still run the latest iTunes and sync the latest iPhone 5 with. Can't do that in Leopard, either.

OK, so ~6 years later, I get a new laptop. The only reason I haven't already is because the MacBook was a great machine to start with.

I understand the complaint if mobile development is a hobby (then yes, iOS development gets expensive very quickly), but if it's how you make your living then it's literally a rounding error.

Wow, I'm amazed they dropped support for computers that recent. New versions Windows/Linux will still run on very old hardware, there are usually drivers around.

He apparently had the bad luck to own the most recently made model of Macintosh that will not run Mountain Lion; virtually every other Mac from 2008 is OK.

The business case for supporting older computers is very different for Microsoft (or for Linux) than it is for Apple.

I have a 2008 MacBook (5,1) which I upgraded to 8GB RAM and an SSD. It runs Mountain Lion just fine. I use it for all sorts of things including Xcode. No idea what you're talking about here.

He must have the last plastic MacBook (4,1), which has a 32-bit EFI firmware and will not boot a 64-bit kernel; Mountain Lion only has a 64-bit kernel. So, even if one thinks it should run Mountain Lion, it can't run Mountain Lion. End of discussion.

If he wants to actually run Mountain Lion and develop for iOS (instead of complaining that he can't do it on his current machine), then $850 at the Apple Store will get him a refurbished MacBook Air (last year's model) that will be probably be much nicer to use (it will certainly be much lighter and have longer battery life). He could probably get a couple hundred bucks for his old one if it's in decent shape.

I think the $100/y makes sense from Apple's perspective and is probably one of the reasons why there are fewer shitty apps than Google, this along with all of the other confusing stuff they do, like provisioning profiles. It simply scares off the hobby developers who don't really want to build for the platform but rather try it out.

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