Also, any kind of software development outside of macOS is strictly forbidden")
This may have come to be an intentional moat, but I don't think it started as one. Remember that iOS and its derivatives are themselves OS X derivatives, and that there was little to no demand for OS X dev tools that ran on other platforms prior to iOS. It was originally more of a historical artifact of all of the tooling being deeply steeped in Apple's own tech stack.
Back in the Rhapsody days there was a version of Cocoa, Project Builder (Xcode predecessor), etc that ran on Windows, but that got scrapped likely because at that point Apple was not the juggernaut that the iPhone turned it into and it was likely judged too expensive to maintain for dubious benefit.
It was originally more of a historical artifact of all of the tooling being deeply steeped in Apple's own tech stack.
I would say that it is tied to an institutional memory of what can go wrong when your platform depends on third party development tools.
Back in the classic Mac OS days, most developers used a compiler toolchain (Codewarrior) and application framework (PowerPlant) from a company called Metroworks.
They were bought by Motorola and those products were discontinued leaving developers in a bind.
After that, Apple decided that they needed to offer their own first party development tools.
It's just the "buy your mom an iPhone" [1] mentality. Apple machines are good, widely available, and start at a reasonable price point - developers should quit moaning and buy a Mac if they want to develop for iOS that badly.
Not saying this is a correct point of view, but I do think it's widely held at Apple, and there's little impetus for them to build developer tools for other platforms because of it.
Comments
This may have come to be an intentional moat, but I don't think it started as one. Remember that iOS and its derivatives are themselves OS X derivatives, and that there was little to no demand for OS X dev tools that ran on other platforms prior to iOS. It was originally more of a historical artifact of all of the tooling being deeply steeped in Apple's own tech stack.
Back in the Rhapsody days there was a version of Cocoa, Project Builder (Xcode predecessor), etc that ran on Windows, but that got scrapped likely because at that point Apple was not the juggernaut that the iPhone turned it into and it was likely judged too expensive to maintain for dubious benefit.
I would say that it is tied to an institutional memory of what can go wrong when your platform depends on third party development tools.
Back in the classic Mac OS days, most developers used a compiler toolchain (Codewarrior) and application framework (PowerPlant) from a company called Metroworks.
They were bought by Motorola and those products were discontinued leaving developers in a bind.
After that, Apple decided that they needed to offer their own first party development tools.
It's just the "buy your mom an iPhone" [1] mentality. Apple machines are good, widely available, and start at a reasonable price point - developers should quit moaning and buy a Mac if they want to develop for iOS that badly.
Not saying this is a correct point of view, but I do think it's widely held at Apple, and there's little impetus for them to build developer tools for other platforms because of it.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rc...