You would never

s/mac/computer/

s/ios/software/

Would you?

It is quite a hassle indeed. As far as I know, you need:

- a Mac (with a recent enough version of Mac OS)

- an iPhone with a recent enough iOS

- a 99$/year (iirc) Apple developer account

These things might be a given for people in SV but it’s quite a big upfront cost for most people outside of HCOL areas.

Unless I’m mistaken and you can do without a Mac? But I seem to recall you need to use iCode (or whatever apple’s IDE is called ;)

The GP's question was about learning IOS dev. For that, you only need the Mac. There is a simulator built in to Mac dev tools so you don't have to have an iphone. The developer account also isn't needed to learn. You only need the $99/year account to publish apps to the app store.

I think you also need the dev account if you want to run apps on a physical phone, but it's been awhile since I tried.

You can just use your Apple ID (I think that's what it's called), which is free. Some of the features are only available if you have the $99/year account.

You can side-load builds onto your iPhone/iPad and they expire after a while (maybe 30 days).

7 days.

It's possible to build iOS binaries without a mac but you have to collect a bunch of the tools yourself since Apple has made it illegal to distribute them. Of course you can't actually get the app installed on your phone without sending it to apple first (this is what eg cydia impactor does.)

IMO: that whole platform is so extremely user/developer hostile it's better to just avoid it entirely unless someone is paying you to work on it.

Definitely not suggesting that it's ideal, but if iOS dev is important to you have you considered setting up a Hackintosh or a macOS VM [1]? Typically macOS Hackintoshes/VMs have annoying issues or requirements that make it unstable for full-time desktop use, but if you're just trying to use the simulator and the Xcode build tools, maybe it's enough?

[1] For example (I am not associated with the website): https://www.soupbowl.io/2020/04/macos-in-virtualbox/

if this bothers you maybe your energy is better spent developing something other than an iOS app

mobile apps were pretty cool in 2009, now they're just another medium

there's so many interesting problems to solve and interesting programming technologies that don't suffer from the problem you're pointing out