Getting enthusiastic to develop iOS apps needs some arrangement. Apple is stringent about hardware and software specifications for your developer devices. If you don’t set up accurately, you won’t even be able to organize your Xamarin app, much less test it on your new projects. Apple demands you to have an accurately configured and commissioned Mac computer to gather iOS apps. This computer can be your first developer computer, or you can have it already on your local network.
If you don’t already own a Mac, you may be reluctant to try iOS development. If so, consider leasing a Mac computer. Some companies crowd Macs in the cloud. I’ll tell you more about the leasing selections in another video. You can create and test your iOS apps using just your computers. This is entertainment and lets you learn about the manner. If you are severe about disseminating or selling your apps, you really should acknowledge buying at least one iOS device. Testing on real hardware is a vital step in verifying that the app development company works as expected. You’ll also need an Apple Developer Account.
This account is necessary to provision your Mac computer and developer unlock phones. It is also necessary to distribute or sell the app. Distribution and sales topics are beyond the scope of this course, but you’ll need to think about them at some point. Finally, you’ll need to install the Apple XCode IDE, their developer tool. Be sure and get the one bundled with the iOS SDK. Xamarin needs the SDK to be available, and Apple forbids third parties like Xamarin from installing SDK. To be clear, you have to have XCode installed, but you won’t be using it to develop your Xamarin iOS application.
To prepare your developer computer for Xamarin the iOS developer needs several impressions. First, you need to revisit the Xamarin website and download the Xamarin installer. There are two versions of the installer, one for Windows PCs and one for Macs. Choose the appropriate one, download it to your computer, and run the installer. Next, you need to know about the developer IDEs. There are two IDE choices available. During the Xamarin install, a copy of the Xamarin Studio IDE is added to your computer. This is free with your Xamarin license, and it runs on either Mac or Windows.
It’s a nice IDE. You’ll be happy with it if you choose it as your preferred Xamarin developer tool. However, many of you already are Microsoft developers and have a copy of Visual Studio on your Windows computer. In this case, you probably want to continue to work inside Visual Studio as it’s a comfortable place and you already know how it works. Visual Studio is updated during the Xamarin install so once the install is finished, Visual Studio is ready to work with the Xamarin tools. Be aware, and if you choose Visual Studio as your primary IDE, you still need to have a Mac computer available to compile the iOS code.
When the inaugration is done, you’ll need to activate your IDEs. The first time you run Xamarin Studio, or Visual Studio and create a Xamarin project, you’ll be prompted to activate with your Xamarin account. You’ll need your Xamarin account ID, and you’ll have to have a license for Xamarin or sign up for the free trial. Finally, if you are using an iOS device, you’ll need to developer unlock it before testing your app on the hardware. You’ll find all the particulars on how to accomplish each of these steps on the Getting Started with iOS section on the Xamarin website. Their instructions are comprehensive.
Just follow their steps, and you’ll be ready to build a Xamarin iOS app with me in the next chapter.
