Build an iOS app without owning a mac

Question

Please correct me if I m wrong   I m new to mobile development and I would like to develop an app to submit to the apple store   But I am heavily discouraged by the prices of the macs that I am developing the app in mind   Let s say I know exactly what I want and how to code it   If I was to create a developers account and pay the fee - then borrow my friends mac  write the code and submit my code to apple  Is that all I need the mac for   And then I ll be able to access all the stats etc through iTunes on my windows computer   Can someone please tell me I m delusional

User · Answer

Update Intel XDK is no longer available   You can use Intel XDK with that you can develop and publish an app for iOS without the mac   Click here for detail

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Also if you want to save some money you don t must buy a Mac  There is other ways how to do it   1   You can use practically any OS to run latest MacOS in virtual machine  look at YouTube   I am using this method really long time without any problems on windows with VMWare   2   Hackintosh  Install MacOS to your PC  You must have compatible components  but if you have  this is the best way  because you eliminate the lags in VM    I am using this in this time  Perfect  On my laptop  but please don t tell this to Apple  because practically this is illegal  3   If you are making simple apps with minimum UI  you can use Theos  Also with Theos you can create cydia tweaks  Only one problem  codesign  If you want to publish app on App Store you still must have MacOS  but if you want to make app in home you can use CydiaImpactor to sign the apps with Apple ID    I used all of this ways and all is working  By my VM is best solution if you don t want to spend lot of time by installing Hackintosh

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You can use Phonegap  Cordova  to develop iOS Apps without a Mac  but yout would still need a Mac to submit your application to the App Store  We developed a cloud application which also can publish your app without a Mac https   www wenz io ApplicationLoader  Currently we are in beta and you can use the service for free   Best regards  Steffen Wenz   I m the creator of the site

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XAMARIN CROSS Platform  You can use Xamarin   its a cross platform with IDE Visual studio and integrate xamarin into it   It is vey simple to code into xamarin and make your ios apps by using C  code

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On Windows  you can use Mac on a virtual machine  this probably also works on Linux but I haven t tested   A virtual machine is basically a program that you run on your computer that allows you to run one OS in a window inside another one  Make sure you have at least 60GB free space on your hard drive  The virtual hard drive that you will download takes up 10GB initially but when you ve installed all the necessary programs for developing iOS apps its size can easily increase to 50GB  I recommend leaving a few GBs margin just in case   Here are some detailed steps for how install a Mac virtual machine on Windows   Install VirtualBox   You have to enable virtualization in the BIOS  To open the BIOS on Windows 10  you need to start by holding down the Shift key while pressing the Restart button in the start menu  Then you will get a blue screen with some options  Choose  quot Troubleshoot quot   then  quot Advanced options quot   then  quot UEFI Firmware Settings quot   then  quot Restart quot   Then your computer will restart and open the BIOS directly  On older versions of Windows  shut down the computer normally  hold the F2 key down  start your computer again and don t release F2 until you re in the BIOS  On some computers you may have to hold down another key than F2   Now that you re in the BIOS  you need to enable virtualization  Which setting you re supposed to change depends on which computer you re using  This may vary even between two computers with the same version of Windows  On my computer  you need to set Intel Virtual Technology in the Configuration tab to Enabled  On other computers it may be in for example Security - gt  Virtualization or in Advanced - gt  CPU Setup  If you can t find any of these options  search Google for enable virtualization  the kind of computer you have   Don t change anything in the BIOS just like that at random because otherwise it could cause problems on your computer  When you ve enabled virtualization  save the changes and exit the BIOS  This is usually done in the Exit tab   Download this file  I have no association with the person who uploaded it  but I ve used it myself so I m sure there are no viruses   If the link gets broken  post a comment to let me know and I will try to upload the file somewhere else  The password to open the 7Z file is stackoverflow com  This 7Z file contains a VMDK file which will act as the hard drive for the Mac virtual machine  Extract that VMDK file  If disk space is an issue for you  once you ve extracted the VMDK file  you can delete the 7Z file and therefore save 7GB   Open VirtualBox that you installed in step 1  In the toolbar  press the New button  Then choose a name for your virtual machine  the name is unimportant  I called it  quot Mac quot    In  quot Type quot   select  quot Mac OS X quot  and in  quot Version quot  select  quot macOS 10 13 High Sierra  64 bit  quot   the Mac version you will install on the virtual machine is actually Catalina  but VirtualBox doesn t have that option yet and it works just fine if VirtualBox thinks it s High Sierra    It s also a good idea  though not required  to move the VMDK file you extracted in step 4 to the folder listed under  quot Machine Folder quot   in the screenshot above that would be C  Users myname VirtualBox VMs    Select the amount of memory that your virtual machine can use  Try to balance the amount because too little memory will result in the virtual machine having low performance and a too much memory will result making your host system  Windows  run out of memory which will cause the virtual machine and or other programs that you re running on Windows to crash  On a computer with 4GB available memory  2GB was a good amount  Don t worry if you select a bad amount  you will be able to change it whenever you want  except when the virtual machine is running    In the Hard disk step  choose  quot Use an existing virtual hard disk file quot  and click on the little folder icon to the right of the drop list  That will open a new window  In that new window  click on the  quot Add quot  button on the top left  which will open a browse window  Select the VMDK file that you downloaded and extracted in step 4  then click  quot Choose quot     When you re done with this  click  quot Create quot    Select the virtual machine in the list on the left of the window and click on the Settings button in the toolbar  In System - gt  Processor  select 2 CPUs  and in Network - gt  Attached to  select Bridged Adapter  If you realize later that you selected an amount of memory in step 6 that causes problems  you can change it in System - gt  Motherboard  When you re done changing the settings  click OK   Open the command prompt  C  Windows System32 cmd exe   Run the following commands in there  replacing  quot Your VM Name quot  with whatever you called your virtual machine in step 5  for example  quot Mac quot    keep the quotation marks   cd  quot C  Program Files Oracle VirtualBox  quot  VBoxManage exe modifyvm  quot Your VM Name quot  --cpuidset 00000001 000106e5 00100800 0098e3fd bfebfbff VBoxManage setextradata  quot Your VM Name quot   quot VBoxInternal Devices efi 0 Config DmiSystemProduct quot   quot iMac11 3 quot  VBoxManage setextradata  quot Your VM Name quot   quot VBoxInternal Devices efi 0 Config DmiSystemVersion quot   quot 1 0 quot  VBoxManage setextradata  quot Your VM Name quot   quot VBoxInternal Devices efi 0 Config DmiBoardProduct quot   quot Iloveapple quot  VBoxManage setextradata  quot Your VM Name quot   quot VBoxInternal Devices smc 0 Config DeviceKey quot   quot ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal c AppleComputerInc quot  VBoxManage setextradata  quot Your VM Name quot   quot VBoxInternal Devices smc 0 Config GetKeyFromRealSMC quot  1 VBoxManage setextradata  quot Your VM Name quot   quot VBoxInternal Devices efi 0 Config DmiSystemSerial quot  C02L280HFMR7   Now everything is ready for you to use the virtual machine  In VirtualBox  click on the Start button and follow the installation instructions for Mac  Once you ve installed Mac on the virtual machine  you can develop your iOS app just like if you had a real Mac    Remark  If you want to save space on your hard disk  you can compress the VMDK file that you extracted in step 4 and used in step 7  To do this  right click on it  select Properties  click on the Advanced    button on the bottom right  and check the checkbox  quot Compress contents to save disk space quot   This will make this very large file take less disk space without making anything work less well  I did it and it reduced the disk size of the VMDK file from 50GB to 40GB without losing any data

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You can use Smartface for developing your app with javascript and deploy to stores directly without a Mac  What they say is below      With the Cloud Build module  Smartface removes all the hassle of application deployment  You don   t need to worry about managing code signing certificates and having a Mac to sign your apps    Smartface Cloud can store all your iOS certificates and Android keystores in one place and signing and building is fully in the cloud  No matter which operating system you use  you can get store-ready  or enterprise distribution  binaries  Smartface frees you from the lock-in to Mac and allows you to use your favorite operating system for development    https   www smartface io smartface

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Let me tell you step by step few years back I was in same situation   So We have two Phases   iPhone iPad  iOS  app development iPhone iPad  iOS  app development and Publish to iTunes Store   1  iPhone iPad  iOS  app development  So If you just want to develop iOS apps you don t want to pay anything   You just need Mac   XCode IDE   Get Mac Mini or Mac Machine  Create Developer Account on Apple its free After login developer account you can download Xcode IDE s  dmg file That s all    Now you just install Xcode and start developing iOS apps and test debug with Simulator    2  iPhone iPad  iOS  app development and Publish to iTunes Store  for publishing your app on iTunes store you need to pay  example  99   year     So For complete iOS Development Setup you need    Get Mac Mini or Mac Machine Create Developer Account on Apple its free After login developer account you can download Xcode IDE s  dmg file pay  99 for publish apps on iTunes create your certificates for development distribution on your apple account download all certificate on mac machine and install into XCode using Keychain tool Get at least one iOS Device  Register you device on your apple account Now you can develop  iOS app  test on Real Device and also publish on iTunes Store

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Most framework like React Native and Ionic allows you to built on their server  Meaning that they can help you compile and provide you with and  ipa file   The problem is you need Xcode or Application loader to submit your app to Apple App Store Connect  Both of these are only available on OSX  To overcome this solution you have 2 options that I am aware of   Rent mac virtually  http   www macincloud com Use website that helps you to upload your app  You need to have  ipa file   http   www connectuploader com

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My experience is that Ionic Pro  https   ionicframework com pro  can do the most of the Development and Publish job but you still need Mac or Mac in cloud at these steps    create  p12 Certification file upload the  ipa file to the App Store   After you created your Certification file  You can upload it to Ionic Pro  You can build  ipa files with proper credentials in cloud  But unfortunately I didn t found another way to upload the  ipa file to App Store  only with Application Loader from Mac   So I decided to use a pay-as-you-go Mac in cloud account  you pay only for minutes you are logged in  since the time I spend on Mac is very limited  few minutes per App publication

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Some cloud solutions exist  such as macincloud  not free

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Update from 09 2017  It is possible to develop iOS  and Android at the same time  application using React Native   Expo without owning a mac  You will also be able to run your iOS application within iOS Expo app while developing it   You can even publish it for other people to access  but it will only run within Expo app   Here is page from Expo on how to generate standalone app    Steps from that page   One  Install exp by running npm install -g exp  Two  Configure app json  somewhere along these lines          expo          name    Your App Name        icon      path to your app-icon png        version    1 0 0        slug    your-app-slug        sdkVersion    17 0 0        ios            bundleIdentifier    com yourcompany yourappname              android            package    com yourcompany yourappname                  Three  Start exp packeger with exp start  Four  run exp build android or exp build ios    You will be prompted for some input  For android you can choose 1  Let Expo handle the process  if you don t have keystore  or if you don t know what it is   For iOS you will have to enter your Apple developer credentials  Then you can provide distribution certificate or let expo handle it    Five  Once in a while you will have to come back and run exp build status command to check whether your build was complete  If complete you will be provided a direct link to  apk or  ipa file   The only drawback to this approach is that it won t be as native as writing iOS app in Swift  and you will have to put up with parade of issues you may run into while developing with weakly typed js  npm  and it s dependency-on-particular-version-of-some-other-library issues  and other stuff

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Short answer   theoretically YES  but this has to be a VERY GOOD friend of yours  but again  you might prefer to buy a used mac-mini TLDR   You will need this Mac for a really long time  depending on your app requirements  your development skills  and your luck with Apple  For example   You might need some days to set up Xcode and the required SDKs and Libraries  It might take some time to get that Developer Account  sometimes you can wait too much even to get your request reviewed  When you submit your application for the first time  you will have to wait sometime  maybe up to several weeks  or even months  to get your app reviewed  Each time your app gets rejected  you will need to find and fix your issues  without much help from Apple  other that pointing out the guideline rule that you broke    then re-submit your app for review  and wait again  Each time you try to apply a patch for your already deployed app  you will have to get your app reviewed and there is a chance that your previously legit app  now breaks a new guideline  so you re-submit and wait  So  from my experience the development of an iOS app is a very lengthy procedure  without even considering the actual code-development time  Can you borrow a Mac for that long

[ios] Build an iOS app without owning a mac?

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