iPhone: Software Development And Distribution

Question

I have a few quick questions about the iPhone software development. I did some research about the topic, but there are a few specific things I would like to ask here, because I will have to estimate the cost of the required hardware and software, before I am allowed to buy anything. I never did any Mac development nor have I ever owned an iPhone, so needless to say this is quite hard for me.

1. I will buy an iMac mini with 2 GB RAM for iPhone development. I will have to use it at the same time as my regular PC, but the majority of the time I won't use the Mac at all. Do I have to buy an additional monitor, a mouse and a keyboard or is there a better solution?

2. I will have to port a C library to the iPhone platform and develop an iPhone application that uses the ported library. Do I need anything else than the iPhone SDK to do this?

3. If I use an external library (see above), can I test the application with the integrated emulator, or is it recommend to buy the device?

4. I will have to send data to a remote webservice. Aside from this I don't require any other features. Can I just buy the iPhone online from another country (the iPhones here are sim locked), or should I buy one with a contract?

5. When the application is ready, it will be installed on a few iPhones owned by our customer. Because of security reasons it is crucial that there is no third party involved in this process (i.e. the application should not be distributed on the app store). Is this possible?

Answer 1

1. If you don't use both computers at the same time it's perfectly possible to use the same monitor and keyboard / mouse for both computer
2. With the SDK you're set, also, you probably won't need to port the library since C is a subset of objective-C and your library will be available for use with the sdk right away.
3. The simulator can understand external library just fine
4. Countries like italy sell the iphone without a contract, you won't have any problem with those. Bear in mind that if all you need an iPhone with a camera then the 3g, 3gs and even the 2g will suit your needs, as all of those have cameras.
5. Yes, there's an option for distribution called "Ad hoc distribution". Using that you can install you app in your client phone without going thru the appstore