Do I really need a mac to publish my game on the apple store?

Hi.

I have only a Windows PC. I want to publish my game on the android and apple store. Do I need a mac to publish my game on the apple store?

If so, is a Mac mini enough for it?


I want to buy a mac mini, because it's cheap. It's cheaper than a macbook etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

yes and mac mini is fine. best of all, it can double up as an asset server or other tasks too, since it takes no power to run it.

 

Just make sure you get a new-ish one, since you'll need to be able to run the latest version of OS X.

--Eric

 

What is ish-one? Do you mean the music that is listed in the search list of google?

 

What? I said get a "new-ish" one. That is, one that's not old, but not necessarily the latest model.

--Eric

 

Without a Mac, the best Unity can do is create a project for XCode. XCode is the compiler (that only runs on a Mac) that does the final build step for iOS. You also need a Mac (and a $100 account with Apple) to test your game on iOS hardware, make sure it works correctly. And then XCode is how you submit the game to Apple.

 

Can I not test my game on an iPhone if I have a mac and not an Apple Account?

Must I get the Apple Account for 100$ first?

 

Yes, you need the account first. You can use Unity Remote without an account, although that's not good enough for real testing since it's not running on the device.

--Eric

 

The $100 a year account lets you access the part of Apple's developer page where you create the App in their system, create the certificate that lets you make real builds on your Mac that will run on hardware, and provision devices that can run prerelease builds of your game.

 

You can use a hackintosh, although I'd recommend a mac mini if you're just getting started.

 

If you can get it working, which in itself is a near impossibility.

 

I was wondering this as well. What about dual booting macOS on my laptop with windows? I just need to compile it on the macOS right? If that's the only thing I'm using it for, what would the problems be with dual booting?

I don't want to spend 1500 on a mac, nor do I even want to spend an extra 300 on a mac device to publish!

 

It won't work, unless you have a Mac laptop.

--Eric

 

You can try getting osx and installing it on one of various virtual machines, and run it in the desktop. That's a good experiment, if slow.

 

that's a great idea. Are there any VM's running MacOS? And what is the oldest OS I need for Mac? My friend has a laptop from 2010, but I don't know the software that's on it

 

needless to say also illegal, if you're not running the VM on OS X, AFAIK
also I'm not sure about all hypervisor extensions required for OS X to run on non OS X VM, last time I've heard Apple actively prohibited this

 

If you want to use the latest Xcode you need one of the latest OSX which means you need a later model hardware. Make sure you triple check compatibilities before you buy anything or waste a bunch of time. I got bit by this!

 

I wasn't aware of it being illegal in this circumstance. How absurd.

 

I wouldn't say its a near impossibility, but you do need a lot of patience. But yeah, I'd only recommended it if you can't afford a real mac.

 

hi,
new-ish one/not old starting from which model / xcode and osx version?
I'm new at this and i'm confused

 

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475

--Eric

 

thanks!

 

I found a Mac mini Early 2009 to buy and cheap
but which is the probability of this old model does not work/be accepted in the next apple updates?

 

I don't know, but the system requirements for the last several OS updates have been the same. Since the hardware stabilized on 64-bit/Intel, there hasn't been any reason to exclude models from updates.

--Eric

 

thank

Thanks!

 

Sorry for raising an old post but it was the closest to what I wanted (I wanted the info on this post as well). Since it looks like I will need to buy an Apple product to eventually get any games into the App Store I will probably get an Apple laptop since I was looking at getting a laptop so I could still work on my stuff when not at home.

My question is, if I install unity on the Apple one but do my day to day stuff on a Windows PC can I save my files to a USB & still work on them using the MacBook without having to do anything more than putting the USB in & copying the project across? Ie can I work on both systems in parallel on the same project without needing to do anything 'special'

 

Yeah, that would work. A better solution would be to install some sort of source control like Perforce that both computers could access over a network connection, check files into source control on the PC, and then pull them from source control on the Mac - that way only the actual changes within files would need to be copied each time rather than the whole project.

Another thing you can do is do everything on a Windows PC, make a build, then copy the build folder to the Mac and just open the XCode project file in the folder to continue the build there, so you can put that build on device. The only trick there is, if you have a recent version of Unity you would need to manually set one file (MapParser.sh) to be executable on the Mac for the build to work. To do so, open up a Terminal, go to your build folder, and do this:

chmod +x MapFileParser.sh

 

I suggest two, if you're making anything for mobile devices. You need to test on actual hardware, not just build and pray.

If you just want a small desktop look for a 2012 Mac mini. Last good mini so far, and should be the cheapest option (even the i7). Otherwise a recent laptop is the best (and will last you many years).

As for sharing projects you should be using Git.

 

Ok, thanks.
I have started using git but I'm not real good at it yet. My main concern was continuity of working on the same project on PC when I'm at home & being able to keep working on it when I'm travelling which it sounds like I will be able to do.

 

Yep, Git is great even as a solo developer on a single computer. It's amazing how nice it is to roll back mistakes if you've committed well-commented code every time you make progress