Crit 02 : Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Well further look into the iOS SDK proved that Apple are made of greedy bastards very good with marketing strategies. Turns out you can only get the iOS SDK to develop apps on IPods by using, thats right Mac. it's Mac only. meaning you cant develop iOS apps on Windows. unfortunately, Ive been a Windows since forever and I have no idea where I can get my hands on a Mac ( or the money to buy one ). For developers who wants their apps to be available to others, they need to register to Apple and sign up for $99 i think. Well I guess thats pretty fair since you are getting an audience through their product. But still, for people who wants to develop apps solely for the purpose of education? Apps can only be used on jailbroken Apple devices unless you pay them and put it up for download on the AppStore.

Not many people are very capable in Objective C and it's the core language to create iOS apps. And yea not everyone owns a Mac.


So there a few ways to write apps in Windows :

Method 5 - Toolchains:
There are several toolchains available (like winChain) that actually lets you write and build iPhone applications on windows.

Method 4 - Use other Languages instead of Objective-C

(i) Code in Java: For Java developers, there is a workaround: XMLVM.

(ii)Code in C/C++ - DragonFireSDK:

Say no to Objective C, say no to forced-Mac and yes to C/C++, Windows. This founds the base for DragonFireSDK that uses Microsoft Visual C++ to develop, test iPhone apps.

Apps, Games created with DragonFireSDK can be completely written and debugged in Windows and are also fully compliant for distribution and sales at the Apple iPhone App Store.

Method 3. Hackintosh: This is one of the effective ways of doing it: Install Mac on PC and then run the Native iPhone SDK.

Method 2: Cross compilation of Adobe apps: You can write your apps in Flash Actionscript 2, ActionScript 3 or Adobe AIR, Flex and then cross compile it to ARM binary that is executable on iPhone. This can be done installing Project Sprouts for which sample Flex applications source is available here.

Here is a video on how this is done:

Method 1. Flash CS 5: This is in fact the most effective and easiest way to make it to App store doing all the “legal stuff”.

Flash CS 5 introduces new Feature that let’s you develop iPhone native applications just like you develop Adobe AIR apps. Recently, Adobe announced support for Multitouch, Accelerometer, GPS support in Flash 10.1 for phones. CS5 adds new APIs that lets developers leverage these modern Phone features and hence develop application not just for iPhone but for all Phones that support Flash.

taken from here. click to read further detail

Final note :
Although the article was posted on December 2009, the last method; using Flash CS5 seems very promising since I have used Flash CS5 a few times. Will look more into this