[JimDabell]

No, you don’t. You need a Mac, but you don’t need to buy one. You can use a free tier on a build service like Bitrise if you don’t have a Mac.

[the_gipsy]

Perhaps technically possible, but in practice it's against apple development directives. I doubt you do this yourself, or know anyone that actually develops iOS apps from a non-mac in the real world.

And you still can't share that app.

[Geisterde]

In practice no one cares what apples development directives are?

[JimDabell]

> in practice it's against apple development directives.

Most professional iOS developers use these kinds of services. They are totally commonplace and not against Apple’s terms in the slightest.

[themoonisachees]

MacOS TOS clearly state that if you're someone renting out access to macOS, you may only rent it for periods longer than 24h. I heavily doubt bitrise does that, as cost would be prohibitive (oh hey I wonder why that is)

[the_gipsy]

I feel you're being disingenuous. Close to zero professional iOS developers develop on a non-mac.

[Geisterde]

The post says you can run/develop what you want and get it to work on apple. Where do "professional" developers apply?

[JimDabell]

There isn’t a part of Apple’s terms where they say you are only allowed to use build servers if you are a professional iOS developer.

Build servers are absolutely fine.

[the_gipsy]

Again disingenuous, I never said "not allowed".

Oh and up until 2019 apple was forbidding any virtualization of macOS in its EULA, there certainly were no free cloud build servers for iOS since relatively recently.

[JimDabell]

> there certainly were no free cloud build servers for iOS since relatively recently.

There definitely were. Bitrise had a free plan back in 2014 and they weren’t the only ones.

https://web.archive.org/web/20141103031325/http://www.bitris...

Are you an iOS developer? Because you are repeatedly taking what is considered run of the mill by iOS developers as if it were some outlandish concept you’ve never heard of before. Build servers – yes, with free tiers – have been commonplace for iOS apps for at least a decade.

[xandrius]

But don't you see how it is yet another hurdle?

Android builds work on that same mac too.

[JimDabell]

I didn’t say it wasn’t a hurdle, I said you don’t need a “multi thousand dollar Apple machine”. And the cheapest Macs cost way less than that anyway.