Apple Certs and Profiles – without a Mac

While I have used Windows 10 for the screenshots etc I am reliably informed that the process also works for Windows 11

I think we will all agree that the annual chore of regenerating signing certificates and provisioning profiles for our iOS project is just that – a chore. Not only do we have to remember the dance that we performed the year before but also need to dust off the Mac Mini and hope it boots.

But why a Mac Mini? Why are we tied to using Apple hardware to generate our certificate signing request and to export the resulting certificate in the correct format?

Well, as it turns out ….. we don’t, we can in fact use Windows 10 using built in tooling.

Running Linux on a Mac! Why?

I never like to throw anything away and when it comes to technology, you never know when you may need it.

So when my 2013 iMac stopped receiving OS updates from Apple I wondered what I could do with it.

Afterall, if it won’t run the latest OS then it won’t run the latest version of XCode and if it can’t run the latest version of XCode then I can’t use it to develop apps for iOS. More accurately, I can develop the apps but because I can’t compile against the latest SDK ultimately the App Store will reject them.

As my MacBook Pro had taken over the role of Xamarin development system the iMac had sat under my desk, unused for months.

So while Apple’s policy of, essentially, obsoleting my hardware is frustrating that doesn’t mean I have to throw the whole thing out – that’s not in my nature. So what could I do with it?

Why do I watch Beginner Pluralsight courses?

Like many developers around the world I have a subscription to Pluralsight, an online service that provides high quality training courses for Software Developers (and many other professions/skills).

However, unlike many other developers and despite having a couple of decades of development experience behind me, I don’t shy away from the courses marked as Beginner.

I know that many will think these courses as being beneath them but while some of the material may be fairly basic for me there is always something to learn, even if it’s ‘just’ how to explain something to a more junior developer.

End of the road for 8yo Workstation?

Back in 2013 I bought myself a shiny new, custom built workstation from Scan Computers. Costing me around £1300 I had opted for a pretty decent spec for the time:

• Intel i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU
• 32 GB RAM
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 650Ti
• 250 GB SSD + 500GB spinning rust HDD

By todays standards this is probably pretty lame but it certainly kicked my old PC into a cocked hat! Able to run three monitors and all the speed I needed with a good amount of headroom.

That said, it still runs pretty well today (some 8 years later) and has served me very well throughout my contracting/freelance work. Today it’s my daily driver while I’m working from home.

Booting from cold to logged in and ready to work takes around 25 seconds (pretty slow in these days of instant gratification but it take me that long to pour a coffee so it’s not a problem) and I’ve never really had any major speed issues with anything I’ve thrown at it …. until recently that is.

Being an Employee – 3 months on

Back in June I announced that I was ‘pulling the pin‘ on the limited company I had been contracting through for the previous nine years. At the end of that post I said that although I hadn’t found a permanent role I was hoping to do so in the near future – well, I’m happy to say that I didn’t have to wait too long.

Completely out of the blue I received a message on LinkedIn from a previous client. They had noticed that I was looking for a permanent role and wondered if I would consider returning to work for them.