do i need mac os for iphone application development ?

[Jigar Naik]

Hi,

I am new to iphone application development. Was just looking for pre-requisite software and os for the development.

Do i need mac os for iphone application development ? Isn't there any alternative ?

[Mark Spritzler]

Jigar Naik wrote:Hi,

I am new to iphone application development. Was just looking for pre-requisite software and os for the development.

Do i need mac os for iphone application development ? Isn't there any alternative ?

You have to have a Mac to run xcode and compile your applications.

There are non-native iPhone development tools that can create apps, but not true iPhone apps. There are some code generator websites.

But on the whole if you want to create a true iPhone app with the same user experience you will need xcode and a Mac. But think of it this way, Macs are above and beyond better machines, and you will never look back after getting one.

Mark

[Jigar Naik]

thanks mark..

but bad news for me... i don't have mac

[Hussein Baghdadi]

As Mark said, once you get a Mac you will never look back again.
I will write the last sentence a thousand times happily.
You don't have to get an iMac or a MacBook Pro, Mac Mini is an astonishing machine for development and the price is acceptable not to mention it is really adorable and huggable like any teddy bear.

[Mark Spritzler]

John Todd wrote:As Mark said, once you get a Mac you will never look back again.
I will write the last sentence a thousand times happily.
You don't have to get an iMac or a MacBook Pro, Mac Mini is an astonishing machine for development and the price is acceptable not to mention it is really adorable and huggable like any teddy bear.

And you can also use your Mac Mini as a Home Theater PC with some cool software. Get the wireless keyboard and new Magic Trackpad and you can code in your living room to your big screen TV.

Mark

[Jigar Naik]

All right... Thanks a lot... Will buy one very soon... Exclusivly for iphone application development...

[Bear Bibeault]

It will also run Windows, if you need it to.

[Jigar Naik]

Is it !!! So i can install both the operating system and will get option which one to start right ???

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Jigar Naik wrote:All right... Thanks a lot... Will buy one very soon... Exclusivly for iphone application development...

Common, use it for everything

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Mark Spritzler wrote:

John Todd wrote:As Mark said, once you get a Mac you will never look back again.
I will write the last sentence a thousand times happily.
You don't have to get an iMac or a MacBook Pro, Mac Mini is an astonishing machine for development and the price is acceptable not to mention it is really adorable and huggable like any teddy bear.

And you can also use your Mac Mini as a Home Theater PC with some cool software. Get the wireless keyboard and new Magic Trackpad and you can code in your living room to your big screen TV.

Mark

I LIKE the idea already.

[Bear Bibeault]

Jigar Naik wrote:Is it !!! So i can install both the operating system and will get option which one to start right ???

Yes

[thomas brian]

Yes, you do need Mac OS X for that. Xcode(SDK) will only work on Mac OS X. However, if the legal part for you is not really important you can install Mac OS X on your normal PC. Just google a bit for Hackintosh.

[Jigar Naik]

thomas brian wrote:Yes, you do need Mac OS X for that. Xcode(SDK) will only work on Mac OS X. However, if the legal part for you is not really important you can install Mac OS X on your normal PC. Just google a bit for Hackintosh.

Great. I didn't know it. Thanks a lot.

[Wendy L Gibbons]

Bother, I wanted to Convert tux paint for my iPad for my kids, but I am not buying a mac just for that, and I don't do rip offs.

[Bear Bibeault]

A Mac is hardly a rip off -- it's a great value! Or are you saying you won't do a Hackintosh?

[Rinkesh Shah]

you can if you jailbreak your iPhone... but that's against your iPhone's EULA, jailbreaking would void your warranty, and there's a question on how to distribute your program without requiring a jailbroken phone.

You could program to Safari for Windows, but that wouldn't be iPhone developement (it's closer to web development). You won't be able to take advantage of all the functions on the iPhone this way, but most of these limitations can be solved with a little creativity.

In short, there's a gray area of the iPhone SDK prevent development on other platforms (read: not Mac).

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

This might probably be a stupid question. Can I develop IPad app on the IPad?

I have an IPad, I don't have a Mac. I want to build games for myself. Can't I just compile it on IPad and play on it?

[Ulf Dittmer]

XCode only runs on OS X, not on iOS, so - no.

[Bear Bibeault]

Have you considered writing your game as an HTML5 web app? Just a thought...

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Thanks Bear. That's a good idea. DOes Safari support Canvas? I've been meaning to get into HTML5 too. I can try that on the IPad

[Bear Bibeault]

http://caniuse.com is a good resource to find out what's supported in the various browsers.

[John Soper]

It's pricey, but I'd say a 256G 13 inch Macbook Air with half the drive partitioned for Windows 7 bootcamp is about as close to heaven as you can get.

I love my setup, one minute you're doing Xcode, than after a quick reboot into windows, you're doing Visual Studio, Sql Server, or whatever. The SSD memory makes VMs run pretty snappy too so you can have VirtualBox running Ubuntu and/or Centos for some free linux fun.

[Mark Spritzler]

John Soper wrote:It's pricey, but I'd say a 256G 13 inch Macbook Air with half the drive partitioned for Windows 7 bootcamp is about as close to heaven as you can get.

I love my setup, one minute you're doing Xcode, than after a quick reboot into windows, you're doing Visual Studio, Sql Server, or whatever. The SSD memory makes VMs run pretty snappy too so you can have VirtualBox running Ubuntu and/or Centos for some free linux fun.

Why reboot?? Install Windows into a virtual machine. You can have Linux, Windows running in VMs and Mac normally all at the same time. No rebooting.

Mark

[John Soper]

Mark Spritzler wrote:

Why reboot?? Install Windows into a virtual machine. You can have Linux, Windows running in VMs and Mac normally all at the same time. No rebooting.

Mark

I like giving Windows 7 the whole 4 gig memory space to play with. Besides, bootchamp (not misspelled) is faster than firing up
VirtualBox. Plus it's fun, feels like two different laptops.

Windows 8 definitely stays in virtual land though (I'm still on consumer preview anyway).

[Saikat Mukherjee]

Wish there was an easy way to cook up a Hackintosh.

I tried it several times but could not succeed :'(

Too much a price to pay (in India, these are really very expensive).

But still a Mac(s) are awesome. I will get one.. someday

[Al Johnston]

I disagree with the assertion that you can only write native iOS apps on Mac... For instance this app: Dognapper was written entirely on a Windows machine.

I write Java server side programs and Flex (Apache Flex Project) UI programs. I write the Flex side almost exclusively in ActionScript. I then use the Apache Flex engine to convert the ActionScript to native iOS and Android apps and I do so in Windows. I generated my distribution keys with Open SSL, tell FlashBuilder where to find the keys and use TestFlightApp to distribute iOS apps for debug purposes.

Since my animator has been working in Flash for many years, it is also a lot easier for us to rapidly create complex mobile apps with a back end server. For example, we built a poker game (Java game server on Linux and Flex Mobile front end) that allows multiple players to play at the same time in a poker sort of way... We wrote a Flex UI to talk to a Java socket where the mobile (iOS and Android) and (non-mobile) web users connect, subscribe and receive messages so that the UI can synchronize - for example if you bet 20 chips, everyone at the table should be told about it when it happens so that they see your stack change. Because of the tools we use, I get to take my animator's FLA and call "new" on any Flash components and to be able to use them as objects (MovieClips in ActionScript 3.0) while easily connecting to Java while writing code ONE TIME that runs on all mobile devices and in web browsers. We do all of this in Windows.

You can't skip the Mac entirely though. While you absolutely can create iOS programs on a Windows machine and should not let not having a Mac slow you down, the iTunes store will not allow you to deploy your apps to the iTunes store without a Mac. This used to not be the case, but Apple changed how the iTunes distribution store works being the swell, open company that they are. Whether you get a Mac or not, I don't know why anyone would want to write software multiple times. Write software once (use a tool like Flex - IMO). Then you can spend more time making your software do the fun things you want your software to do rather than being railroaded into an expensive computer just so you can do work twice (assuming you care about deploying your software to devices other than just iOS devices). Anytime I deploy to the app store, I just borrow a Mac from someone who uses it to read email and surf the web.