Well, you know, there can be more reasons why Mac costs "a thou" besides the ability to develop for iOS and OS X.
It did not surprise me to see Android developers using Macbooks Pro, but when I saw Windows Phone developer using it—I admit that was unexpected. But understandable.
It would be silly of Apple to drop the MAC requirement for iOS dev : lots of effort to port their tools on other OS with the risk of incompatibilities and they would loose sales too.
And there's no incentive to use Objective-C on any other platform, so with Apple pushing Obj-C on their platforms it makes sense to get a Mac for iOS development, particularly if you spill over to desktop development (which you can do in C++ of course).
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple someday has a Windows (or whatever) version of Xcode. That is, in a kind of parallel to the OP's essay, Xcode as we know it isn't necessarily "Mac-only" but simply built for Mac first.
Re:The Fallacy of Android-First
by wirelessest on Monday April 07, 2014 @12:26AM
(#7544631)
If your issue is just the expense of a Mac and not the principle, find yourself a used Mac mini.
I agree that the requirement is a pain though. Our CI, automated builds, etc are all standard across all products except the iPhone client which runs as a cron job on an old Mac in the corner.
Don't get me wrong, I want to like iOS and its UX is quite a bit better than Android's still. But I'm not in a position to drop a thou on a Mac just to develop for it.