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by nikanj 1383 days ago
Does this mean one can reasonably develop ios apps without a mac?
9 comments

Sadly, no.

> Xcode Cloud is a continuous integration and delivery service built into Xcode and designed expressly for Apple developers. It accelerates the development and delivery of high-quality apps by bringing together cloud-based tools that help you build apps, run automated tests in parallel, deliver apps to testers, and view and manage user feedback.

This requires xcode, which requires a Mac as far as I know.

This is just a CI/CD product. You still need a Mac and the Xcode desktop app.
Why would you? I'm of the opinion that instead of trying to fight the system you should work with it, take the path of least resistance, and work on the best solution for the problem.

Tangentially related, in my opinion, native apps built in the tooling offered by the phone's manufacturer (xcode or android studio) will always be superior - to the end-user - than any cross-platform compromise. I'll admit that e.g. react native may have a better developer experience, but you don't build apps for the developers, right?

No, this lets you do automated tests and builds in the cloud.

You’ll still need Xcode to create the project, sign it, manage entitlements, load to test flight, etc.

Xcode cloud requires you let Apple handle code signing automatically so you don’t have to do it locally, although obviously you still have to have a paid account. Additionally as others have mentioned this can push things to TestFlight for you.
> load to test flight

The web page says it supports test flight.

As others have said, this is largely unrelated.

However, they're making some steps in the direction of letting you develop iOS apps with just an iPad, via new capabilities in Swift Playgrounds: https://support.apple.com/guide/playgrounds-ipad/get-started...

e.g. https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/05/this-to-do-list-app-is-the-fi...

Get a Mac Mini and use VNC along with a GitHub/GitLab runner. Works quite well!
> without a mac

> Get a Mac

Next recommendation is gonna be to build a Hackintosh. (Btw, I did, and I even ran Xcode on it, would not recommend.)
If you don't want to buy one, you can rent a Mac in the cloud only when you need it (unrelated to Xcode Cloud) for 0.10€ per hour at Scaleway
If only. Apple's licensing terms require you to keep the instance for at least 24 hours[0].

[0] On the Scaleway checkout for the Mac Mini M1, at the bottom: "As required by Apple License, you must keep this Instance for at least 24 hours. You will be able to delete it only after 24 hours.".

If you don't care about TOS, it's very easy to run macOS on x86 hardware these days.
You still need a Mac with Xcode