iPhone Gamekit peer with a desktop peer

Question

I am looking for a way to establish a wireless connection between an iPhone and a desktop client. Gamekit looks promising but all the examples / documentation only explain iPhone to iPhone.

• Are there examples / documentation for an Gamekit peer on the desktop (cocoa or java)?
• What are the alternatives without doing to much low level socket programming?

Answer 1

The iPhone emulator does not run these bluetooth p2p connections. Hence, it can only be tested with real hardware.

It is a little confusing because the GKSession reference talks only about being a way to connect peers over bluetooth, while the GKPeerPickerController states "can be configured to select between Bluetooth and Internet connections." However there's a clear note there that they're not really going to help you with internet based connections.

Answer 2

Here is the answer you seek!

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3240617/cfnetwork-and-bonjour-integration-for-iphone-to-mac-integration

Answer 3

This is unfortunately a non-answer, but...

GameKit is an abstraction of the bluetooth and wifi networking layers, allowing a specific set of protocols for communication between two devices -- to communicate with a desktop client, you would need to replicate all of the GameKit functionality on the desktop, since there is no comparable API on the desktop. This would not be a simple undertaking.

I would highly suggest developing something over bonjour, as @Jordan suggested. Bill Dudney's project (blog article). It's a great place to start.