iOS development on Windows [duplicate]

Answer 1

My personal experience with IT has always been like pulling teeth to get them to allow/support any Apple product. Don't let them talk you into some patch work alternate system for making apps. Straight up OSX is far and away the best way to go, especially since you guys are talking about doing more later. Do it right from the start.

Answer 2

I dont have a Mac, but i setup a hackintosh (MacOSX running in pc) by following guide from this blog http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/. If your pc spec is compatible, the Mac OSX will running flawlessly, just like in normal Mac.

Since you ask this question, I assume you dont want to fork a money to buy Mac, so setup a hackintosh machine is the best option for you. You just need to spend some money for buying legal copy of Mac OSX. Yeah I also setup the hackintosh in order to develop iphone apps on a pc.

Answer 3

Although there are always hacks and work-arounds you'll need a Mac for any serious iOS development. You can pick up a Mac Mini for under $1000, I'd be surprised if you could setup a Windows machine that could build iOS Apps for fewer than $1000 worth of man-hours... plus you'd probably end up having to constantly tinker to keep it working.

• AFAIK, Mac OS X doesn't reliably run in a VM on a Windows Machine, but that could have changed since I last checked.

• Most of the cross-platform development tools fall back to HTML/Javascript-based technology that is run in an embedded browser and packaged with a custom tool, I'd tend to avoid those as the Apps that they produce will not feel native.

• I don't believe that Apple checks to see where the code was built. Adobe's FlashBuilder can export to an iOS binary, those Apps are accepted by Apple.

• Creating them shouldn't be hard... testing them may be a little slow, but you'll definitely want to test on real hardware early and often.

• If you get the Mac Mini you may hold option and click to simulate a dual touch in the iPhone simulator, but for more significant multi-touch testing you'll need to target a real device.

• Depending on your goals, a web app may be a good solution. You'll potentially lose some performance, and some control, but you may not need all that much to accomplish your task.

Answer 4

While there are things like FlashBuilder, these solutions don't provide the performance or flexibility of an actual native application. As for virtualizing OS X, this is not an option. The EULA for all versions of OS X specifically prohibit hardware virtualization (though I believe Lion allows for it but only when running directly on genuine Apple hardware. In other words, there is no way to run OS X on any computer other than a Mac without violating the EULA.

Answer 5

1. Is there a legal way for a company to make iOS apps on Windows?

   My advice is to try as hard as possible to get an Mac.

   But just to provide another alternative :

   Try Phonegap. It's basically a HTML5 wrapper, mainly used by app that needs to be published in multiple type of devices. However it also able to access native resource like camera and storage, which you can see in their feature page.

   If your concern is more into development machine, by using Phonegap you can develop an app in any OS. You don't need to buy multiple mac for all the developer.

   PhoneGap also have a service called PhoneGap build which is actually a cloud service that able to build your code to multiple platforms, including Iphone. This is legal and you can publish it App store.

2. If one of those ways is running OS X under a Virtual Machine... Is it possible to do it with OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive?

   No, You can only run OSX virtual Machine in OSX also.

3. Creating games on OS X (VM) would be hard?

   It depends on the developer. But since the game should be tested in emulator, your question is not that relevant.

4. In the case we get the Mac (mini)... Would we need the Magic Touch or Magic Trackpad to test multi-touch? Or is only possible doing it by pressing one of the keys plus the left click?

   Xcode Emulator able to simulate that. Read this blog

5. Creating Web Apps would be a solution? I know that we can't use the Camera of the device using Javascript but is the rest ok?

   If you are using PhoneGap, it's basically web apps wrapped by native. It's still give you access to resource like Camera, Compass, Storage etc.

Answer 6

Would you suggest to get the oldest generation of iPod Touch for testing purposes or only the 3rd and 4th generation?

The iOS 5 SDK has many new features that make app development easier. By the time your app is ready for release, most users will have moved on to iOS 5. It is my understanding that iOS 5 does not support 3rd-gen devices, so there's no point in obtaining those if you're going to use SDK 5.