Will Windows Phone 8 export work on Mac?

News & General Discussion
1

I’m investing in a new hardware and this question just popped up… We are interested in Windows development so the answer to that is important to our buying (mac vs PC) decision.

Windows Phone 8 SDK requires a PC with Windows 8 64-bit (Pro edition needed for emulator support)

So, I assume we’ll need a Win8 device running Unity PC version on it to be able to build for WP8. Similar to how we can only build for iOS on mac.

Does anyone knows if that’s true or we’ll be able to build for WP8 on mac version of Unity?

Btw, this screen shot from the blog shows it’s running on Windows…

2

I don’t think you will be able to build form a Mac, but if it turns out you can, I think you’d get best results with a PC anyway.

3

I would doubt that you can build for windows from mac, but couldnt you just buy a windows OS and dual boot your mac?

4

Bootcamp or parallels with a mac is more than optimal for this sort of thing. Depends on your budget of course.

5

+1. I’m currently developing for iOS, Mac, and PC on one iMac with Windows running in VMWare (or BootCamp when I need best performance). Couldn’t be happier.

First part is flat-out wrong. What do you mean “best results”?

6

Thx for the suggestions everyone…

I think I’ll go with the iMac route and use parallels (or bootcamp) if need for windows os turns out to be a “must” for WP8 export…

7

I use parallels for all my windows needs on the mac. Works a treat!

8

New info,

Parallels VMWare is not an option as the WP8 emulator needs Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) hardware support to run.

It will only work with boot camp assuming your mac’s cpu has SLAT support. But if you are not planning to use emulator, parallels should work fine.

http://blog.toddysm.com/2012/11/windows-phone-8-development-on-mac-all-the-gotchas.html
http://www.nsilverbullet.net/2012/11/01/windows-phone-8-emulator-on-macbook-pro-no-slat/

9

Specially when you can hack Windows’s kernel and enforce BootCamp to use up to 64gb of ram, instead of that dumb 2gb limit for x86 imposed on BootCamp :wink:

10

same problem here, we have finished an app on iphone, ipad and Android from macBook, but not windows phone. it is so annoying that setting up a new environment, visual studio, unity and some SDK, specially for windows phone

11

Nope, you will need Windows 8 or 8.1 installed (possible via VM/parallels/bootcamp/whatever).

I assume Windows 10 Preview is also viable but I haven’t used it yet so I can’t promise it’ll work in the OS’s current state. :wink:

12

it’s more annoying for windows users to buy a mac device/service, mess with xcode and stuff, just for iOS :roll_eyes:

13

Yea, probably not worth the effort.

14

Oh the horror! Seriously, though only a few years back alternate platforms meant porting your game to different codebase. Setting up an second deployment environment is about an hour worst case. Seems to be a pretty decent tradeoff. :wink:

1 Like
15

No, you need Visual Studio and Windows 8 or 8.1 installed.