Environment for writing iphone apps

Hi, so, I'm coming to Apple from Linux and Visual Studio Community. Used Android Studio for creating Android Apps. Right now, I'm just planning my first MacBook purchase, and I like to make sure I know what I'm doing.

I wanted to write an app for iPhone, just for 1 particular client, but at the time, Visual Studio Community said that I needed to write Xamarin on a MacBook to be able to build it.

Is this still true?

Do I need to have a MacBook to write iPhone Apps in Swift?

If so, can I use a MacBook Air? What kind of MacBook will do?

I did search this forum for this information, and I searched the Web, but I can't seem to find anything on Google anymore.

Pro is good for you. Xcode is the official IDE for create iOS iPad Mac iWatch App.

I can't code on a macbook air?

of course you can.

To write an iOS app you will need an Apple made computer such as a MacBook, iMac etc. so you can run Xcode, and the iOS simulator (you can build and test directly on a connected device instead of the simulator if you have one available).

Xcode is the IDE you will use to write your iOS/watchOS/tvOS/macOS app in Swift. Generally I would go for the machine with the most powerful CPU you can afford, if that's a MacBook Air then that will work fine, all be it a bit on the slower side (Xcode isn't known for being the most lightweight program to run). I have a few students who use lower end spec machines from pre 2015 and while they can get work done, they struggle a bit with slowdowns the more advanced their applications get.

You can find more details on how to get started with iOS development using Swift on the official apple website: Apple Developer Documentation

Sometimes on Linux machines, I will make a swap file to ease some of the RAM requirements. Might that help on the MacBook Air? I think the most I’m going to get is 8g for a hardware.

You should be fine with 8GB RAM, there might be some disk swapping if you use a number of RAM heavy applications at the same time (Xcode, Chrome, Slack, etc.) but that it handled by the OS for the most part.

Personally if I was looking for the cheapest machine I could get to develop iOS apps with I would be looking at the CPU as the limiting factor. Looking at the current range of machines the MacBook Air 's CPU is pretty slow, it's only a dual core which in todays world is fine for internet browsing and light applications, but not ideal for more intensive work like code compiling. Don't get me wrong, you 'could' use it to make iOS applications, but your experience wouldn't be great. For not much more you can get a quad core CPU in the 13" MacBook Pro and that will be a much better experience, it won't be perfect, and you will probably still have to wait for longer to do certain actions, but it will be much better than the MacBook Air.

I'm not sure where you are based so availability might be sketchy, but it might be worth looking at the refurbished machines on Apples website too. You can get a MacBook Pro that is a few years old which is much faster than the MacBook Air for discounted prices.

Awesome. Thank you.

I would be comfortable starting with Core i7 2.8GHz, 16GB memory

  • You are bound to Apple computers for development (shame Apple)
  • Swift is a much slower compiler than Objective-C
  • 10+ minutes compilation times on Air for a small-to-medium project with a dozen dependencies.
  • You have no control over swap files, macos is managing swap for you
  • Thank god they optimized Slack lately

Consider a Mac mini if you need to save a buck.
Try before you buy. (Or buy, try, and return.)