iOS app compiling and MacInCloud/similar

Question

I am contemplating developing iOS apps use Delphi XE4 with iOS. In my research I saw MacInCloud, http://www.macincloud.com/features/tools/tools

Does anyone have practical experience with this? Can I hook up my Windows/Delphi/similar development tool to MacInCloud/xCode for cross compiling (to obey licensing terms) and have the app debugged on my iPhone?

Maybe over time it would be beneficial to buy an iMac, but if I could start creating apps without it would be great.

Answer 1

I recently tried exactly that with MacInCloud. XCode and Delphi XE4's PAServer is now automatically installed by MacInCloud so I had few issues hooking up my Windows and Delphi environment.

What I found was that running and debugging in the iOS simulator on the Mac in the cloud worked fine. However as my upload speed was quite slow a compilation took some considerable time. Each compilation seemed to require an upload of about 17MB for the app and another 50MB for the debug symbols.

There is no way of plugging in your iPhone into the mac in the cloud and MacInCloud therefore recommend that you use a further cloud provider (TestFlightApp.com) to deploy the app to your device. I couldn't test using the TestFlightApp service as I have not signed up for the required developer account with Apple and so cannot deploy to physical devices at all.

All in all, if I was doing serious work I would either buy a Mac or pay for faster upload speeds but despite that I found it an very educational experience.