The expected path is (note, I am very salty about this particular topic):
- Buy an Apple computer.
- I think people normally buy a Mac mini for this purpose (currently $799 new + tax). However, the MacBook Neo is cheaper at the moment (currently $599 new + tax).
- This “one-time cost” is more expensive than you think, because Apple will happily engage in planned obsolescence and stop providing software updates for your computer whenever they feel like it. This is a problem because XCode has a minimum software version requirement in order to work (and hence do the signing).
- Buy access to the Apple Developer Program (currently $99/yr + tax)
- You probably need to maintain access to the developer program forever. Their documentation says that if a user already installed the app it will still function, but implies that if it needs to be downloaded again they will not validate your certificate and you’re back to being shunted into quarantine.
- Acquire a certificate required to sign your app.
- Sign your app with the provisioned certificate and then get it notarized.
Congrats, now your app won’t get shunted into quarantine. Also, you have to do this to publish your game for MacOS on Steam.
If I am wrong about the “proper” way this is to be done as according to Apple, I would be happy to be corrected as I would love to make my games more easily available to MacOS users. But, this is so hostile to developers that I begrudgingly refuse to interact with it. It just doesn’t make financial sense for me and I don’t really want to engage with what appears to me like racketeering.
One of my hopes for t/suki eventually is that it can act as a “publisher” that provides the hardware and certificate required to sign MacOS builds for free or low-cost to everyone here that needs it, but that bridge is very, very far off in the future should we ever get there.