Are you serious? How about just leaving this user hostile ecosystem instead?

Again, there is no alternative. I need a Mac for iOS development. I also do Android development and I know enough details about how the sausage is made that I don't want to use an Android phone as my daily driver.

So not only do you buy hardware for this toxic ecosystem, but you directly contribute to its success, and still complain about it. Nice.

Android is fine. At least the sausage recipe is available, iOS is a black box that's probably just about as gross inside. You can choose to use technologies that don't disrespect you as a user and a consumer.

iOS is not a toxic ecosystem, I love the OS they also have far superior hardware. Sure, lacking a headphone jack is annoying, but I can live with that. I can't live with Android phones using inferior CPU's and GPU's. I also wouldn't want to use Google's horribly over-engineered OS.

Why does your phone need a powerful CPU or GPU? What exactly are you doing with it that demands that?

Without going into specifics, I work on some mobile software that does heavy image processing of the live camera feed.

Getting a decent frame rate on shitty Android hardware (even the so-called high-end devices) is quite a challenge. iPhones are so much faster it's not even funny.

Well, if you approach with that attitude of course you sentence yourself to a life of regret.

Millions of people found alternatives.

> Millions of people found alternatives.

Millions of people do iOS development on a non-Apple laptop that doesn't suck ?

I rent a machine from the cloud so I have everything available for $50 a month

Last time I checked there are lots of other computers on sale.

Last time I checked none of them ran macOS, which I need to do my job as an iOS developer.

Faire enough, I was assuming the tipical HN user that only sees macOS as a pretty UNIX.

In that case I do share your pain, only in my case it is related to their GPUs.

I don't even mind the touchbar and the USB-C ports, but I wanted them in addition to the existing ports/keys, not instead of.

4 ports is just not enough.

Linux is a nice alternative, and has a much more pleasant userland than macOS. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

You don't need an iPhone, there are thousands of alternatives you could have bought.

Android is far, far worse. I'm actually an Android developer by profession and I use Android phones all day, I wouldn't want to use an Android device as my personal phone in it's current state.