While possible, it's far from ideal. I had this experience, using an old MacBook to build an iPhone app. It repeatedly crashed because I had Atom and XCode open at the same time.
The $500 Mac mini can handle Xcode just fine, and that is a many year old machine that hasn't been updated. Maybe not if you've been spoiled on better hardware, but it performs adequately.
I used my personal $500 mac mini for full-time desktop and webapp development when employed at Citrix. This excludes the cost of peripherals, of course.
We're talking about a Cordova-wrapped SPA. You can develop those on Raspberry Pis if you had to. A 9 year old $250 MBP off ebay will absolutely suffice.
Yes, I'm using hyperbole. :-) Even $1000 to build a free app is too much. (That said, going to Apple.com and clicking Mac shows me the base model for $4999.00 [0])
What happened to cross-platform apps? Why is it that Google and Microsoft are champions of the free and opened web, and even cross-platform dev tools for web development, while Apple is holding back progress?
I think the reason is their business is jeopardized by the free and open web, just as Microsoft was in the late 1990s.
Yeah, no, it actually literally doesn't. There's no "Macbook" button on Apple's site. There's a Mac button. The Mac page then shows you a range of Macs, from the Macbook to the Mac mini, at the top of the screen. they are showing you the iMac Pro--their halo-effect product and newest release--on the Mac landing page; that's not the same thing and it is dishonest to assert that it is.
Open standards are good. (The open web, whatever. I use React Native, because I like writing applications that feel responsive.) Open standard thumping as a proxy for weird platform fandoms is really not. Stop.
Mac button, not Macbook, but you already knew that.
Open standards are good. And we should want them to win, because it provides a safe haven from the abuses of big corporations. And I think right now, Apple is stepping into those waters: they are holding back web standards in order to keep promoting their business, which is reliant on native apps.
Right, because computing is full of cross platform frameworks that you can write once and run anywhere and have as great of an experience as native apps - look how great Java and Swing were.
Android uses the Java language on top of Google's non cross platform framework. That's completely different than using Java with Swing. An Android app is not cross platform.
Web apps on Android May "work" but still aren't as responsive as native Android apps.
To be fair, judah said "going to Apple.com and clicking Mac shows me the base model for $4999.00"
Doing what he said takes me to:
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro
On which the only computer I see without scrolling is the Mac Pro. My UI design friends constantly tell me anything "below the fold" may as well be invisible.
Clicking the "Buy >" button takes me to
27-inch Retina 5K 5120-by-2880 P3 display
$4,999.00
I know there are other options, but that's the default path for a naive user wanting to buy a mac from apple.com.
I hope casual users don't end up following that path often!
First you said "$7000 on a Mac", then I said "You can buy a Mac for <$1000", then you said "Macbook shows me the base model for $4999.00" and you linked to an iMac Pro.
