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iOS

Posted by Will Ness
Will Ness
576 Points

Why can't iOS be programmed on a Windows computer.

On the tutorial it says you can only program if you have a mac computer. Is there any way to program on a windows, because I would really like to program iOS.

Michael Wright
Michael Wright
99 Points

Sorry, There are no programs for windows for programming iOS. You must own a mac.

4 Answers

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

There's an app for that check out MacinCloud

They describe their service as:

MacinCloud is a remote Mac rental service. PC, older Mac and Mobile users can use our service to access rented, Apple Manufactured Mac servers through the Internet.

Mike Morales
Mike Morales
19,833 Points
Mike Morales
Mike Morales
19,833 Points

I use the Oracle VM VirtualBox using Ubuntu on my Win7 computer. It does have an option to use the Mac OS X but you would obviously need the Mac OS X disc, for this to work. If all else fails, you could borrow a Mac from a good friend?

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

OS X VMs are only supported on Apple Hardware.

Mike Morales
Mike Morales
19,833 Points

Hi James, Thanks for your support here at Treehouse. On the other hand, I'm a little confused about your reply? Are you stating the VirtualBox is only supported on Apple Hardware, or are you referring to something different? Because, it is possible to run the VirtualBox on a Windows computer, and easily run different operating systems including Mac OS X.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Mike Morales - If you take a look at the known limations page for Virtual Box, you will see it states

Mac OS X guests (Mac hosts only)

There are ways around this, people can those hackentoshes, but neither virtualbox nor Apple will provide any support with those configurations. So if someone tries to make a hackentosh VM it may some of the work, it may at other times.

It's not exactly the best platform on which to learn to be a iOS developer on.

Mike Morales
Mike Morales
19,833 Points

James, Thanks for the insight about the known limitations. I do play around a lot with the VirtualBox using Ubuntu, and a few other flavors. Although it took me some time to figure out how to use the VirtualBox. Thank you, for the quick response, and your dedication to Treehouse!

John Locke
John Locke
15,479 Points
John Locke
John Locke
15,479 Points

Short answer: Because Apple wants you to buy more Apple gear.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

John Locke - I like the way you explain the use of licensing agreements to create to vendor lock in :smile:

Thomas Anthony
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Thomas Anthony
iOS Development Techdegree Student 22,352 Points
Thomas Anthony
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Thomas Anthony
iOS Development Techdegree Student 22,352 Points

The answer to your question is not quite as simple as some people make it sound. Often, you will hear: "It is because Xcode only runs on Mac hosts" or "Because Apple doesn't let you program on other platforms" or something along those lines. The answer is far more complicated than that, it has to do more with system architecture.

Operating Systems do a good job of abstracting away a lot of hardware inconsistencies; things like data word sizes and endianness. Each system has it's own set of hardware which causes compatibility issues across different systems.

Compilers are designed to convert plain text into machine code, but only across a relatively narrow range of hardware, as different hardware operate using different instruction sets. It is similar to being a linguist with a finite set of fluent languages and everyone you talk to speaks a different language.

Simply put, even if you had all the source files and libraries, you can't compile a proper binary that an iOS device could execute; much like you can't take the source files from a Windows machine a compile a binary executable on a Mac without any virtualization.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Compilers are designed to convert plain text into machine code, but only across a relatively narrow range of hardware, as different hardware operate using different instruction sets.

I think you are over simplying a bit here and conflating processor architecture and compiler tool chains here

But I'm mostly a sysadmin, not a developer so all the talk about gcc toolchains mostly goes over my head.

Thomas Anthony
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Thomas Anthony
iOS Development Techdegree Student 22,352 Points

You're right, my statement was an oversimplification; compiler tool chains are more complex and portable than what I described in my response. The point I am trying illustrate is that cross-platform compatibility issues concerning source compilation are often hardware-related because the binaries generated by compiler are only for a limited sub-set of system architectures. Source files compiled on one platform will not execute on another without modification, hence the need for tools like Make; it doesn't matter how portable the compiler is.