Using Unity, is submitting to the Apple store pretty straight forward.
To my understanding, I need a developer account ($100 / year) in order to test on physical devices.
Now, I own NO IOS devices (I’m strictly an Android guy), but I have access to many friends and family with IOS devices (iPads and iPhones of all different generations). Do I need physical access to these devices to test, or is testing done OTA like Android Beta Apps (submit compiled app to the store, and the devices you have defined will get it OTA?). And is using a device that is not owned by me breaking any of Apples TOS for their developers?
I’m also curious about Apple rejecting the app. What sort of reasons would an app made in Unity be rejected? I’ve had no problems on the play store ever over the several years of having my dev account, but obviously its a much different process, so I need to know what sort of things to watch for when porting my Android apps over.
Lastly, I do not own a mac. My plan was to rent a Mac in the cloud, then I would use that to compile the IPA (i think thats the right extension for IOS right?) from the unity project remotely. Anyone else doing something like this with any amount of luck? I dont see why it wouldnt work, but just wanna hear from someone first hand. Either that, or is there any compilation services out there that will compile your xcode project for you? (Id be leary of this though, as who knows what someone could change in the project before compiling, but maybe im wrong?)
I think those are my main concerns right now, but if anyone has any other insight at all, id appreciate hearing it as well
This plan is futile at best. If you can’t afford (or refuse to buy) a mac and iOS device to develop with, then you need to accept the fact that you are not serious enough to succeed.
Wait, If I can’t afford a mac and iOS device then I’m not serious enough to succeed? Explain what one has to do with the other?
Using your logic, that’s like saying “If you can’t afford to eat, then you’re not really hungry” or “If you can’t afford a house, you don’t really want a roof over your head”
Or how about “If you can’t afford an education, you don’t deserve one”.
FYI, it IS a “refuse to buy” scenario for me, but when I am getting request after request to “make this on iPhone” or “build me that on iPad”, the curiosity gives in at some point. My apologies for asking questions on a forum though.
Clearly you have a serious case of Apple Attitude going on. It’s all good though, enjoy your finger print reader. I thought they were cool too (in 1995 when my laptop had one).
@IdleDev - I don’t think SouthernCoder69 is trying to tell you how to earn your living. The feedback from him/her and me is that your approach is unlikely to work out, based on our experience. You can of course create an Apple developer account, make a build in the cloud and ship it to your contacts using Apple’s ad-hoc build. What we are saying is that you’ll have no knowledge of whether this build will crash and burn on launch. It might run, or it might not. iOS builds are converted into Arm assembler, which means some of the protection that Mono provides is removed. If you look at the troubleshooting docs here:
you’ll see the kind of thing that can go wrong. Asking your family and friends “did the build work?” is probably not what you had in mind. Which is why I recommended your approach will make things harder, since the iteration time will be extended, and your friends might get bored playing a game that crashes. SouthernCoder69 expressed it in more black and white terms. I’d soften that by suggesting you need to think about how much revenue an iOS build of your game might make, and whether that revenue justifies the purchase of a Mac. (Which can probably be bought from ebay for a few hundred dollars, assuming it’s a mac mini and not the latest device, and an iPod Touch or something to actually test the build.) I would expect someone charging you to make your build and test it for you would cost more than then hardware.
You asked the community for some advice, and you got some advice. These forums can be a bit of a wild west, but assume everyone is well-meaning, even if the way they express themselves irritates you. If you can’t afford a house, then your life is going to be a little more prone to problems than if you do have a house. If you cannot afford to eat, you are going to spend more of your time finding food. If you cannot afford a Mac and iDevice, then building and testing an iOS title is going to be harder. Maybe someone who has used a rented cloud Mac and not tested on a device will chip in.
Exactly….no need to pretend like anyone has an ‘apple attitude’…whatever that is. I’m just saying point blank, if you are doing this outside of hobby reasons, it’s going to be futile. If you don’t believe me, then enjoy trying to figure out how to work around the limitations. If you just want to play around, then you have entered into a new full time hobby that costs nothing other than the $99 to be a developer. ENJOY!
Fyi, not buying a mac to develop IOS is like not buying a F1 race car for the races next weekend, and instead bringing your honda civic….will it physically drive around in circles? Yes…Will it be a challenge? Yes most definitely…… Will you win? Probably not a chance in Hades. Your mileage my vary oh glorious android user…enjoy your golf swing analyzer…lol
I think what southernCoder meant was that you HAVE to invest in a mac and iOS hardware if you’re serious about developing for iOS. It’s not a simple case of quickly compiling on a mac and hey presto, a game. For starters, you can’t easily develop for iOS on a PC so you would need to import the whole project in to unity on a mac before anything else. Then make the relevant adjustments and optimisations before testing on hardware; an emulator only gets you so far. There is no substitute for testing on actual physical devices.
Whether you think Apple are a bunch of A-holes for insisting on a mac only dev environment is irrelevant, those are the cards you’re dealt. As a full-time dev (which I assume you are) it’s a simple business decision as to whether the investment in Apple hardware will pay off.
A good way to start off is to buy a mac mini and plug it in to an existing monitor. They’re fairly inexpensive way of getting involved in iOS development. If after several months you’re not getting the returns to justify development on two platforms then sell it, they hold there value quite well. There’s also the ongoing cost of cloud services that you’d need to consider which could, and most likely would, end up costing more than buying a mac.
Bugging friends an family to test on their devices is ok to begin with but you’ll need you’re own eventually if you don’t want to become a pest. It’s also nice to have devices to hand that haven’t got someone asking for them back.
I seem to remember seeing a new plugin that lets you build to iOS on a PC. Haven’t tried it. Can’t find it. If that works, you still would need an actual device. I’d purchase the oldest version of the 2nd newest iPad or phone (I think tablets are way better so iPad). That would be an iPad3 or iPad mini maybe. Tons of them out there.
Don’t worry, no one will make fun of you because they’ll know you only bought it to deploy games to
Perfect, these were more the responses that I was looking for. While everyones responses make sense, I decided not to bother, at least not in the immediate future until I have more projects finished.
@SouthernCoder69, I apologize for the way I snapped at you. You’re response just fueled the fire of an already bad day and struck a nerve. Hope no hard feelings came of it, and I take anything harsh back (except the fingerprint reader comment, I meant that! heh )
P.S.
We have a Golf Swing Analyzer?!?! EPIC!
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