What are you using to compile iPhone apps… with Windows?

I can see that the 10.4 to 10.5 upgrade is probably a major one, it was 3 years in the making. I’m not sure how many of the others users had to pay for but I see 10.x “upgrades” in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008. I hope Mac users did not need to pay for each and every one.

I hate defending Windows, but XP came out in 2001 and that is the only OS I have used (or paid for) since then.

My issue with Xcode 3.0 is that they left Tiger users in the dust. While 3.0 may indeed have some new features, don’t tell me 2.41 is not capable to compiling Objective-C code for the ARM processor, because it can. I suppose 3.0 simply takes advantage of some new widgets or such in Leopard, and they felt it was too much work to support 2.41 and Tiger.

By the way, I like your Chinese app – ironically, my first app was also going to be Chinese-related. A kind of Chinese puzzle app for reviewing and learning new characters.

My development dreams may not yet be dead – I noticed the tool QuickPwn would seem to open up my iPod and let me stick in my apps there. I could compile under Windows (albeit no sexy UI designer or emulator, hey it’s like Java 1.0 again!) and then transfer to the iPod and test it out.

And hey, if it breaks the iPod, I’ll buy my girlfriend a new 2G :-P

Thanks for your feedback. And despite all my criticism, I really would like to get into the world of Apple development – the iPod Touch is just such a sexy little gadget!

Cheers,

Ian

In the past I might have defended Apple on some of your points, but the only one I’ll mention is 10.4 to 10.5 is (kind of) equivalent to Win95 to Win98. The 129 is justified and there are alot of new features. Free “Service packs” in OS X are after the second digit – 10.4.8, 10.4.9, 10.5.2 etc. (Also the newer Xcode has stuff that the older one doesn’t)

http://code.google.com/android

First, I’m a Windows programmer. I looked around and found WinChain, which does let you compile iPhone apps but no user interface or simulator or any of the good stuff.

BUT… my girlfriend also has an iMac. Sweet! Let’s get programming, right? Wrong. Because she has Mac OS X 10.4, and XCode 3.0 needs 10.5.

No problem… I’ll just upgrade to 10.5, sounds like a small upgrade, like adding a service pack in Windows. Wrong again! Time to shell out $129 US for that! It seems that Apple releases this upgrades fairly often and charges for them, unlike Windows which has a new version every 4 or 5 years, and you can still develop new apps on an old OS.

Why I can’t use XCode 2.41 to build iPhone apps is beyond me. It seems Apple does everything possible to keep their customers upgrading and paying for things.

Example : When we downloaded our first app from the AppStore it didn’t seem to transfer onto the iPod. No error. No explanation. Turns out, we needed to upgrade the iPod Touch OS ! It’s not enough that we bought it, now we need to shell out $10 US just to have the privilege of running apps!

And of course, the icing on the cake. Discovering that even if i DO buy OS X 10.5, I still do not have the right to transfer my custom apps to my OWN iPhone ! I need to shell out $100 to get a developer’s license.

So at this stage, if I want to start writing iPhone apps, I need to pay Apple $10 + $100 + $129 = $239. The whole thing has turned me off it completely. I was dreaming of these slick apps I was going to create on the iMac and then run on the iPod Touch – just for my own personal use… and a dream it shall remain.

I was kind of psyched about getting into the world of Mac programming, but it looks like I’ll stay in the world of Windows – which, while lacking the elegance and style of the Mac, does not charge me left and right to be a casual developer.

I want to take 1 of my EXISTING WindowsXp boxes… and run UNIX and MacX and xCode on that.

Yeah, people do it all the time. Just go buy a Mac, use boot camp, and install windows on the second partition.

Otherwise, you’ll have to look into the OSx86 project.

Possible?

I do not know when it will be released. It has been submitted to Apple so it’s out of my hands. I’ll definitely post if / when it is finally put on the App Store.

If you subscribe to the “Chinese” RSS feed (top left of the page), you’ll be one of the first to know when it’s up.

Thanks for your interest in the app!

Thanks

Yes, to run your app on a physical device you need to have the $100 developer license. You can run it in the desktop simulator without the license however.

This might help with the terms

Objective-c == c# Cocoa == win32 Xcode == visual studio

That’s not 100% accurate, but it’s close enough to get you started.

Re: the NDA – I am not a lawyer so I don’t know how enforceable it is. I find that most developers try to stay true to their word though. If asked not to talk about something – even if it’s a totally stupid rule – they tend to try to not break their word – at least in the apple development community.

Some don’t though, and some don’t even know they are under NDA (you’ll be under NDA if you download the SDK too) so you can still find bits on the net just not a lot.