Dumb question: why does a cloud offering require onprem macOS?
Shouldn’t folks on iOS at least be able to access XCode Cloud
Shouldn’t folks on iOS at least be able to access XCode Cloud
Because it can be triggered by pushes into git, you could make changes to existing code from an iPad or PC and get it built. But you can’t (realistically) do anything that requires Xcode such as adding new things to your project or messing with xib files.
Not just developers who try to do it for a living, but the demographic that used to be called power users (and before that: hackers): the enthusiasts that install things and dig deeper and make tools for themselves and maybe make tools for others or even transition to being career developers.
It’s the developers who build the moat around the walled gardens of mobile, and enthusiasts who bring in the people in their lives. I think Apple knows this and intentionally builds new APIs (while depreciating old ones) just so they can force devs to upgrade their OS’ which in turn forces them to upgrade to the next generation of restrictive hardware and lead them further down the garden path.
I have no insight in to the workings of Apple. I only see what they show to the public. I’m comfortable being wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.
At least macOS is a UNIX under the hood these days (unlike MacOS 9), which provides some 'cross-platform synergies', but looking at where Apple has been taking these UNIX roots with iOS that was probably just a lucky accident. Enjoy it while it lasts (on macOS at least) ;)
That has literally been Apple’s business model since the 80s.
Apple has been well-known as a walled garden since its inception. Some are ok with that, some aren't.
Much of the stuff that Xcode Cloud does is automation that's ~easy with a terminal and some scripting and that many developers end up doing on their Macs, but that is hard to do in the limited computing environment that iOS offers – things like packaging apps for TestFlight with the right signing keys, compressing images, etc. By moving those processes to automation running in the cloud, Apple are making iOS development on iOS more feasible.
Yeah. Sounds like Apple is starting to get serious about their developer market, huh?
iOS developers have been asking to be able to do iOS development on iOS for a long time, and that's exactly what Apple are delivering. It's certainly not just a children's sandbox either.
It might as well be, it's not like you'd be making any apps that Apple doesn't directly profit off of. Pretty much as interesting as Nintendo's Toy-Con Garage.
Is it logical to do so? No but it is possible and Apple sanctioned. In fact it was featured at last years WWDC
Those devs aren't going to purchase Apple hardware whether Apple sells them cheeseburgers or not, so its more profitable for Apple to sell them cheeseburgers.
You can, in fact, write an app and publish it to Apple's App Store with it, all from an iPad. I have no idea how much actual uptake this has seen, since I think the capability only came out at the start of the year?
If you teach a class, having a CI build and run the programs, potentially taking screenshots for you to review later could be a pretty good use case, especially for remote home work.
This is a (presumably well-integrated) alternative to CircleCI. There's nothing about this particular product that would make it even remotely relevant for a middle school programming curriculum.
At any rate, what you're asking for already exists — Swift Playgrounds has been around for years, it's specifically tailored for learners, is kid-friendly, and already lets you take the whole journey from your first line of code to publishing on the App Store.
But of course that doesn't add to their monopoly profits :-)
> I can't think of a good reason Apple would want to support developers who want to publish in their (very) walled garden but aren't willing to purchase at least one macOS device
Or even Xcode, considering how powerful iPads are these days (M1 chip, etc).
Apple's approach seems to be to use Swift packages as an alternative project type that can be shared across iPads and Macs and, most importantly, do not require support for running binaries outside of an app container.
How this evolves over time depends on Apple's opinions about their operating systems. If they were to basically hand people what amounts to a manufacturer-sanctioned jailbreak, then they could port Xcode to UIKit with all the functionality it has on MacOS, save for the lack of AppKit support. Alternatively, and more likely, what they'll do is add new app extension types to do Xcode-like things in Swift Playgrounds. So if you need to, say, use Rust code in your app; you'd literally download a Rust compiler from the App Store to do that.
Or they could do nothing and be satisfied with the hobbyist-grade, Swift-only programming environment they already ship.
The main problem is purely just Apple not seeing a use case for virtualization on a touchscreen. They need to let go of at least one Strongly Held Belief.