Sorry. I can not help you in this topic. I pay the 99 USD/year to Apple.
Yes, this is the basic requirement anyway.
In addition, the process of creating, certifying and assigning devices to an installable IPA is significantly more complicated than for an Android APK. Also, I believe it requires an Apple OS (with Xcode) to build an IPA.
So, there is no offline Android build server (at least not from AppInventor itself) and there will be no iOS build server option either.
True, the user will need to have a Mac with Xcode.
I think this is a reasonable requirement because you don't need a Mac for learning purposes (there is the companion for that)
Even though it is forbidden to install Apple OS on non-Apple hardware (Windows PC), it is basically possible, albeit complicated.
There is the test environment for iOS builds linked previously. Once we are ready to put things into production the sources will be made available as a PR and merged in accordance with our open source development process, at which point anyone on macOS could build and run their own copy of App Inventor with the iOS build capability.
This is something that has crossed my mind on more than one occasion.
Based on the stats we have been collecting on the test server, we estimate that we should be able to service roughly 5 builds per minute per core, and we have 38 cores available of Apple hardware. For comparison, we run 168 cores total (21 machines x 8 cores) to support Android builds. Given our current user numbers, I think this is possibly enough to support the release of the iOS build functionality. There is the separate issue of squashing the many bugs identified by others before we release.
The major challenge with the "local first" build approach in my opinion will be ensuring folks keep up to date with App Inventor. Whenever we release a new version that changes the components (and triply so if we're doing independent Android and iOS releases or do a fix for bugs affecting compiled apps only), we redeploy the buildserver infrastructure with the latest code. This ensures that builds are always using the right backend and reduces the debugging load. If folks run their own server we have to ensure everyone updates otherwise we might end up trying to debugging an issue that's already been fixed.
3 Likes
If all (possible) bugs and inconsistencies are to be eliminated beforehand, then it will probably never happen (as I already said).
On this occasion, a quick question: When I use the Player component, the MediaPlayer is used on Android. But what about iOS, which player is used there? When I build a media app natively with Xcode & Swift, I use the AVFoundation framework. AVFoundation | Apple Developer Documentation
If I remember correctly in 2011 - 2012 I installed an Asus I7 - 8 GB RAM laptop with Snow Leopard and later with Lion, for testing purposes, with the info from here... https://hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_tutorials2. If I remember correctly, the only complicated thing was two drivers, one for wifi and another I don't remember which. At that time I was impressed by the speed of this laptop in any kind of task on MAC OS versus Windows, the difference was like the sky to the ground, and the speed was incredible. So... I can tell you that nothing complicated... click... click... click and finish. For somebody that fights with AI2, install MAC OS on a Windows PC it is a child game. And btw... I don't think that if I pay some bucks for a product and that product is my property, somebody can tell me what I can do or not with my propriety! For that reason, there are a lot of fights all over the internet.
Yes, this applies to your notebook, but Apple's OS is not your property, you only acquired the rights to use it (and must/should comply with the terms and conditions).
But I absolutely agree that the permanent and increasing restrictions imposed on us by the state and big techs have become unbearable. It must and WILL stop - soon!
In pretty much cases the only difference between a MAC and a PC hardware is the sticker and the case. On the internet, at the time when I do those tests, I'll find tons of discussions about the monopoly vs low-cost advantages of Intel technology. There was some theory about the fact that it is possible to be illegal to take only the advantages from the relation hardware - software but maintain the monopoly. I don't follow this over time. At that time, I read some conversations about Apple don't take any measures if you don't sell this combination. I don't know why?! However... The Hackintosh/osx-86 world has maintained the trend until now, some reasons why... Exists! With more than 10 years of history of exploiting PC hardware with MAC OS software, I haven't heard about anybody who has problems with Apple.
Anyway... For somebody that makes money with a MAC... I don't believe that $2,000 to $4,000 is a problem. You name it... inversion/investment it is a tool to make money. My Fluke 190-202 cost me about $6K... in 10 years produce over $100K.
Well, I think we're increasingly getting off topic.
1 Like