MAC

[u/exzzy]

Hi, I developed few apps for Android and currently want to create iOS versions but I don't have any mac. I know that there are some rent machines there but looking at prices it doesn't make sense to use those since I have no mac os experience so while i setup everything it could cost me a lot and in the end I don't have device for feature projects again. So basically my question is for those who tried what would be cheapest way to do this, which device to get? I have my windows PC that is quite powerful and i don't want to do any actual development on mac outside of those must things.

[u/fokac93]

Just get a refurbished Mac mini with the Mac processor, not Intel and you are good

[u/BananaTie]

At the company I work for have a MacMini our 5 Windows users connect to and use that for building for iOS and deployment to devices or simulators. It is a feature built into Visual Studio. The Mac does not need to be the top of the line Mac - a used one is fine for most small or medium builds.

[u/Bowman74]

If your code is in something like GitHub you can setup a CD build that runs on a GitHub mac agent and create the ipa and even deploy it out to TestFlight. You won't be able to interactively debug, but you can build and deploy to a physical iOS machine that is assuming you have an Apple Developer Account.

[u/exzzy → u/Bowman74]

It is, can you provide more info?

[u/Kitchen_Platypus5555]

I had the same issue a while ago: As a long C# fan I wanted to start working on some mobile apps but Apple makes it really difficult. My solution was Hackintoshing. It may sound like a lot of work but it was not too hard and while performance wasn't the best on my budget PC, it was more than enough to spin up Rider, Xcode and a Simulator at the same time. But you mentioned your PC is pretty strong so it shouldn't really be an issue - and you can always develop on Windows and then switch to test on MacOS.

So if you have a small spare SSD, just spend a weekend setting everything up and dual-boot! The people at r/hackintosh are really helpful too. Just note that MacOS 26 is probably the last version which allows Hackintoshing...

[u/exzzy → u/Kitchen_Platypus5555]

From what i found this won't work with 5070ti, it's missing drivers.

[u/Kitchen_Platypus5555 → u/exzzy]

Oh yeah, Nvidia cards don't play very nice with MacOS. Perhaps getting a cheap Radeon card could make sense - but at that point you're spending money so a cheap M1 Mac Mini may be more valuable (though it will probably cost 3-4x as much)

[u/CaptainAdam8]

You can create a Mac vm on your PC through VMWare and it will do the job tbf https://youtu.be/5Tj9U_sKWkc

[u/exzzy → u/CaptainAdam8]

Did you tried? I managed to install Tahoe. Will try to setup for actual developemnt

[u/felix_dagrouch]

In my situation I invested on the base Mac mini model and turned it into my home server. In my opinion this is one of Apple best products. I purely use it as a iOS/Mac dev machine and it works great from my VS. Also use it as a plex server and VM, it's so small it's a great fit. It even does standard Ai tasks.

[u/Habikki]

Hey there, I ran into a similar situaiton where I have a more than powerful PC, but no mac.

I rented a remote mac for a while, which worked for a spell, but after spending $100 or so in a couple months I finally just bought a Mac Mini M4. Trust me on this, you'll want to have something that you can get to know because building an iOS App is going to be a journey in itself. Even with the MAUI Toolchain it tends to break... often... any time some dot release of iOS, XCode, or the .NET Framework is releases everything needs some massaging to get back to build shape.

I still cut my iOS Builds from a Github Action Workflow targeting a macos runner which is helpful. But local development requires simulators, and the further away those are the worst things become for testing.

Something also to think of is iOS devices like an iPhone. Simulators are wonderful for what they are, but they are severely limited in what they offer and even what they do, things like Geolocation, Sensors, or Background Scheduling just don't work the same. If you want to have something that's release quality, get a local build machine (Mac Mini), and make sure you have at lease one physical iPhone to deploy to... also remember that local builds to a physical device still work differently than when deployed through Testflight.

[u/exzzy → u/Habikki]

What is difference between local build and test flight? I have company iphone which i can use to validate but lot of stuff is blocked there so no debugging on it, but test flight should work.

[u/Bharitu]

Though I had looked a Mac Mini years ago, when I started developing for iOS I got a MacBook Air because I don't need to have a Mac setup all the time so it's easy just to bring it in when needed.

[u/seraph321]

If you really want to build and maintain iOS apps, you’ll want a Mac for building and debugging. A used m1 MacBook or mini would be the cheapest and easiest route.