Roamy started as a lockdown project with a Karlsruhe founder: turn a phone into a spontaneous tour guide that narrates the sights around you as you wander, nudging you off the obvious path while staying a reliable companion. I took on the iOS app — which meant learning an entire platform from scratch.
A deliberate jump into unfamiliar territory
Native iOS was new ground for me: a new language in Swift, a new IDE in Xcode, and the conventions of the Apple ecosystem. I took the project partly because it was unfamiliar. Picking up a stack end to end on a real product, with real constraints, is the fastest way I know to actually learn it — far faster than tutorials in isolation.
When the build machine dies mid-project
The complication was hardware. My trusty 2012 Mac Mini — my only way to build for iOS — finally gave out, and replacing it with new Apple hardware wasn’t in the budget for a side project. Rather than stall, I built a Hackintosh.
Building a Ryzen Hackintosh for iOS development
Most Hackintosh guides assume Intel. A friend pointed me at the OpenCore project, whose AMD support let me run macOS on a Ryzen 3600 with a Radeon RX 5700 and an MSI 570 board. With the right kernel extensions, a carefully tuned config.plist, and a walkthrough from c’t, it came together and ran Big Sur without drama. For roughly €700 I had a fast, capable development machine.
A good workaround buys you time. It doesn’t owe you forever.
What I’d do differently
The Hackintosh was the right call for that moment and excellent value through 2020 and into 2021 — until an OS update broke it, as these setups eventually do. With Apple Silicon now shipping, a native Mac is the obvious choice today: more power, none of the fragility. The workaround was right for the constraint, wrong as a long-term bet.
Roamy itself shaped up into something I’m genuinely happy with, and I joined the open beta on a new iPhone SE. If you want to wander somewhere with it, take a look at gigi.guide.