Intro

• Macbook Air M1 Headless

I don’t tend to enjoy using Apple products. I want to be able to make my software available on their platforms though.

To publish apps for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS, you really need Apple hardware. Also, if I am to provide software for their platforms, and especially if I want to sell my work, I need to be able to experience my apps in the same way my users will experience them.

It’s basic respect for the user.

Virtualisation

I tried Virtual Machines, probably had half a dozen MacOS VMs over the years in VirtualBox and QEMU/KVM. Getting MacOS working in a VM is difficult, inconsistent and (at least on my machines) performance isn’t great. Apple strongly does not want you doing this, you’ll always be swimming upstream.

It’s a joyless experience.

Codemagic

I tried Codemagic, a continuous integration/continuous delivery service which lets you publish to various platforms including the Apple ones. It’s a great service and has a free tier, but it seemed that my usage would end up putting me in a paid tier, and that could get expensive for me quite quickly.

It’s also from-a-distance, and while Codemagic does allow remote login to the MacOS GUI it’s not the same as having a device in front of me, and if I want to thoroughly check the experience of using my apps on Codemagic’s remote machines (rather than just running builds) that’s going to quickly eat up any free minutes.

I can certainly see this being a solution for some situations — not mine.

So…

For the first time in over 20 years of owning dozens of computers, I allowed myself to decide that I needed some kind of Mac.