Develop iPhone app without a Mac? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Come on, just look on eBay for the cheapest intel mac mini you can find. Even a Mac laptop with a busted screen (that you could hook to an external display) would work. You're talking just a few hundred dollars probably and then you can maintain it as her phone/Touch is upgraded.

Answer 2

What you have described is a viable solution, however you should consider using the open toolchain for the iphone.

You don't need a mac then, only need to jailbreak the phone to make sure your app will work.

For all those who say it can't be done, this was the only way to make Apps for the iphone before the SDK was out :)

Also if you are after a guide to using the open toolchain then I highly recomend this book

Answer 3

If you're considering creating a GUI using a javascript library anyway, why don't you just write a web app instead of an iPhone-native one? It seems like overkill to jailbreak the device just so that you can install a ruby + sinatra web app on it. Can't you just put the ruby web app on a server and create a Safari shortcut to it on the home screen? If you don't have a server, you could always run the website off a PC in your home...

Jailbreaking the OS and running a ruby app onto it would be technically cool, don't get me wrong - I just think it'd end up being a time sink.

Just my 2c!

Answer 4

The only reliable info I could find is at the always-excellent MetaFilter

http://ask.metafilter.com/110466/Anyway-to-develop-iPhoneiTouch-apps-without-investing-in-a-Mac

The answer is apparently no.

You absolutely need an Intel Mac of some description.

The entire iPhone build process is too deeply ingrained in XCode to build elsewhere; and the only other Objective-C compiler I know is gcc, which doesn't support any Apple's additions to the language (nor their libraries).

And, in direct opposition to what people are saying above, Objective-C is absolutely my favorite native, compiled language. Elegant, small (only a few changes from C), late-binding, dynamic, straightforward. It's what C++ should have been.

Lots of people recommend picking up a secondhand Intel (remember, must be Intel!) Mac Mini as the cheapest "port of entry".