## What the Mac is actually for

Three things: opening the project in `mobile/ios`, producing a signed archive, and uploading it to
App Store Connect. Everything before that, which is most of the work, is Rails.

```bash
bin/dev
open mobile/ios
```

## The ways around it, honestly assessed

**A cloud macOS CI runner.** GitHub Actions and several others offer macOS runners. This works, and
it is the sensible answer if you already have CI. The cost is minutes billed at a higher rate and a
slower loop when signing goes wrong, which it will the first time.

**A rented Mac.** Reliable, monthly, and it is a real machine you can debug on.

**Neither.** Ship Android first. The Play Console has no macOS requirement anywhere in the path, so
you can have an app in a store while you decide whether iOS is worth the tooling.

## Android is genuinely unconstrained

```bash
open mobile/android
```

Android Studio runs on all three desktop platforms and produces a signed App Bundle on any of them.
If the goal is to have a mobile app at all rather than specifically an iOS one, this is the shorter
path.

## What a Mac does not save you

The 99 dollar Apple Developer Program membership, which is separate. And the review, which is the
same regardless of what built the binary.

## Plan the order

Web first, because that is where the screens come from and they work in both shells. Then whichever
store your users are actually in. The shells in `mobile/ios` and `mobile/android` both point at the
same Rails app, so shipping one does not commit you to the other or duplicate any work.