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Ask HN: Developing for IOS on a VM or "Hackintosh" environment

9 points by manuscreationis ↗ HN
Anyone have any experience or advice with this?

Looking for a low cost alternative to getting started with IOS development.

Any and all input welcome

25 comments

[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 73.9 ms ] thread
[dead] dangson
Have you considered buying a used Mac on craigslist? Last time I checked in the Chicagoland area there were Mac minis going for $400. That's probably comparable to putting together a hackintosh. I'm currently using a 3 year old MacBook for iOS development and it's handling that pretty well.
coryl
Depends how good you are (or how much time you want to spend) with hacking your system.

I had VMWare running, and it would be slow and occasionally freeze for no reason. I also tried installing iDeneb to dual boot, and it was a pain in the ass and didn't work.

Mac Mini's are about $500+. A used macbook pro can probably go for $700-$800.

manuscreationis
I was hoping to do it with either a VM, but fall back to a hackintosh if I had to just to get going, then once I had some experience under my built an idea I wanted to really execute on, go buy a used mac, or a mini.

Not seeing a lot of positive experience with the VM approach, however...

Shame

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jtchang
I have experience developing that way. Vmware on Ubuntu. Mac OS X Lion. If you want to know more e-mail me directly.
TobbenTM
Tried VMs before with bad luck, never got it to work properly.

I did however run hackintosh on a Dell laptop (XPS M1330) which ran alot better. Only problem was shutting down, where the GPU drivers would crash, but everything else worked perfectly.

That would be a low cost alternative (got mine for ~150$) There may be a better Dell suited for this, but this worked for me.

manuscreationis
I do have an old (very old) dell laptop kicking around... But I would need to do some research on hardware compatibility. It's definitely nowhere near as good as an XPS-anything would be; The thing is seriously under powered.

I'll keep this in mind, thanks!

pasbesoin
There's a site devoted to turning Dell's into Hackintoshes. I happened across it some days back, coincidentally. Don't have the URL at hand, but I think it had "latitude" in it.
steventruong
Buy a used Mac. You'll be much happier. The hackintosh route sucks as you'll run into lots of potential issues including lack of updates among other things.
manuscreationis
Like I replied to another person, my hope was to get my sea-legs with a vm/hack setup, then once I had some experience and a solid idea to execute on, invest in a used mac.

But thanks for the advice

bmelton
Worst case, even if you hate MacOS, you can just install Windows on the Mac after you get it.
jonhendry
Maybe you could look for a Macbook with a busted LCD. It might be significantly cheaper, but you could use it with an external monitor.
r4vik
I guess this is how I would do it: http://www.macincloud.com/ more providers on this quora thread: http://www.quora.com/Virtual-Private-Servers/Can-I-get-a-VPS...
manuscreationis
I've seen them before, but the price seems exceptionally prohibitive once you get into serious long term usage... I would imagine i'd use enough hours in a given week that before long, I would have been better off just buying a machine. But i'll admit, i'm mainly doing the math out in m head.

Also, the page has broken links when you go choose a plan, so it's hard to get more info.

But this is solid advice for someone who wouldn't need to use the system for many hours in a week.

r4vik
yeah for me I'd probably use it 5-10 hours a month, maybe it's worth figuring out how to get OSX running in an EC2 instance
manuscreationis
Hmmm you know, that never occured to me as a possibility...

I'll look into that, as well

Thanks

Edit:

From a quick search, it seems as though it's more trouble than it's worth... Which seems to be the hallmark of what I'm reading about taking the "easy" way out overall...

Oh well

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phaus
I gave macincloud a shot for a couple of months. I like the concept but for someone located on the east coast, the service didn't seem to work very well.

I contacted their customer service and they responded quickly. Testing speedtest.net and a few other websites, we determined that my internet connection should have been more than fast enough. Unfortunately it was still taking about 10-20 seconds for the program to refresh the desktop once on the settings reserved for low bandwidth customers.

The service didn't work very well for me due to the distances involved, but if you live on the west coast I'd recommend giving it a try.

macrun
It works pretty well in the west coast here. They say that they are using real Macs which is a big plus to get the latest updates for xcode etc.

Also, CoronaSDK, Titanium and GameSalad etc. are pre-installed. Very easy to get started with those, although there are some lags due to screen refresh rate.

phaus
Glad to hear it. I was really excited about the idea of using an actual mac. Every time I buy a new computer I get really close to buying a macbook. Unfortunately for Apple I love playing video games. It is really pathetic when I go to buy a new computer after 2.5 years, only to find that latest and most expensive macbook available (which is marketed as a graphics workstation mind you) has a video card 1/3 the speed of the computer I am replacing.

If Apple found a way to add a semi-reasonable video card to their tiny cases, I'd be happy to give them a shot.

braco_alva
As previous comments said, it is a lot better buying an used macbook, I had the same dilemma a year ago, tried with a hackintosh with no luck, a couple of months later I found an used macbook on ebay that it was in really good shape, still using it.
xtrimsky_
I used a VM a few years ago, worked very well. And it was fast as I was doing it on a desktop that had "Virtualisation Technology". Felt like using a real mac. I remember I downloaded the VM via bittorrent. I think if you put Mac OS X on a VM its illegal in any cases.
xtrimsky_
PS: I also installed Mac OS X on a dell previously. It works very well if you have the right laptop, and have 30+ hours to spend trying to install it. Some laptops cannot run it.
dazzla
I started out with a hackintosh but learning OSX, Objective C, Cocoa Touch, XCode, etc was more than enough without that added hassle.

I'd buy a Mac as many have suggested or just do it with Android instead. It's easier to iterate on Android anyway and you can port to iOS afterwards.