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App development with Swift gets you great things such as upgrading your iPhone, but then getting locked out of development because xcode is out of date. But wait, the next version of xcode requires your OSX installation to be Sierra (which your computer is not candidate for upgrading to)! Excellent.
it's also one of the highest-paying software niches

this might not last, but you can always switch to android. unless mobile dies out completely, but that won't happen for a while

I highly doubt iOS will die out, but I can see the market getting over-saturated with mobile developers for the number of jobs available.
> it's also one of the highest-paying software niches

Thats a myth, app development is one of lowest-paying software niches. Many don't even earn enough to recover their $99 fee.

Sure, Apple hands out a huge pile of cash but almost all of it goes to King, SuperCell and other big corps.

I'm talking about salaries working for one of those big corps, and I'm talking specifically about iOS, which is higher than Android when comparing mid-level and senior salaries. This is based from what I've seen on Glassdoor, and from talking to recruiters in my area (SoCal).
I know some people who own "app shops". They can only afford to hire students because the app business doesn't pay that well anymore. Also, they can't afford to do native app, it's almost always HTML5 or something similar.

Different worlds I guess...

My IOS app business failed and I was forced to take a job at a company with a free iOS app. Net result?

I still make $1,000 to $2,000 a month from my old apps, without updating them.

I now make over $130k a year (salary + benefits) in my day job doing iOS development, in a city with one of the lowest large city cost of living in the U.S.

Apple just announced they've paid out over $70B to iOS App developers since the store opened. You don't have to be an owner of King or SuperCell to have gotten your share of that money.

You develop for the most lucrative software market on the planet with an 8 year old computer?
I exclusively use OSX (hackintosh) to code a personal use app for my hand-me-down iPhone.
I'm not sure if you are seriously interested in iOS development, but most Macs in circulation that aren't Sierra compatible can be upgraded with this tool: http://dosdude1.com/sierrapatch.html

If you don't have the budget to buy a Sierra-compatible Mac (a few hundred dollars) You can also buy a used iPhone very cheaply, especially if you look for ones with damaged screens, and keep it on a version that's supported by pre-Sierra XCode.

I ended up using that patch, and Sierra appears to work perfectly fine (for all the things i care about) on my old computer. Cheers!
You can copy the device support from a newer version of Xcode to an older version, even if it does not run on your OSX version. Download the new Xcode > right click on it > show package contents > Contents > Developer > Platforms > iPhoneOS.platform > DeviceSupport, copy the versions you want from here (e.g. 10.3) to the same folder in the Xcode version that your OSX supports. After you open the new Xcode and connect your device it will process the symbols which can take a while, but after it's done you can debug apps again.