How to Start learning to create iphone apps

Question

Well I'd like to create apps for the iphone, starting out with really really basic stuff and working up, but I don't have a Mac at the moment (well I do but it's a powerPC ibook G4, which you can't develop on) and before I invest I'd like to learn how to create apps.

I also read an article in a newspaper about how a guy starting creating apps (before Apple launched the app store) on his PC for the jailbroken iphones, then when Apple launched the app store he switched to created "legal" apps. (the article said he carried on using his PC but I'm not sure that thats true).

I'd like to do a similar thing, but I don't care about releasing any app to the jail broken iphones, I just want to learn on a PC and then I can decide to sell my ibook and save up for a Mac.

But I don't want to go out buy a Mac (expensive) and then find it's to hard for me to understand and have wasted £500 or whatever.

Answer 1

As far as I know there is no way to develop Apps on a PC (except using an installation of Hackintosh)

If you want to see how difficult / easy development is you can get a general idea by creating a developer account on http://developer.apple.com/iphone/ and download some sample files. But, you will never really know whether or not you are cut out for it until you try to actually do a project yourself, and that requires a Mac.

Answer 2

Already asked before:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/718401/develop-iphone-apps-on-a-non-mac-system

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/113547/iphone-development-on-windows

Basically, you can develop on Windows, but it's a slow pain in the ass.

See e.g. here: http://www.chemlab.org/2009/02/20/scrap-the-mac-leave-the-os and detailed guide on how to do it here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22358/how-can-i-develop-for-iphone-using-a-windows-development-machine#28573

Answer 3

My sincere recommendation is to spend some time with XCode on your current iBook, and get comfortable with some Mac development in general.

iPhone and Mac development use many similar libraries (although obviously UI is completely different), and if you're well-versed in one, getting up to speed on the other isn't tremendously difficult.

This will let you know whether to invest in an Intel-based Mac and continue onto iPhone development.

XCode should have come with your Mac on the installation discs. You'll need to use that copy, because the one at http://developer.apple.com is Intel-only.

For getting started books, I recommend Aaron Hillegass's excellent Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X 3rd Edition.

If you go with sberry2A's recommendation of a hackintosh, then you can jump right into iPhone development, and can get the dev tools from Apple. Going this route, I still recommend the Hillegass book, and then supplement that with iPhone SDK Application Development by Jonathan Zdziarski.

If you're going to be focused primarily on Games, and already are fairly comfortable with C, instead of either of the above books, go directly to iPhone Game Development by Paul Zirkle and Joe Hogue. (I'm currently working through this one.)

Answer 4

As far as I know, prior to iPhone SDK 3.0, the SDK's were (inofficially) compatible with PowerPC. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1537018/iphone-sdk-on-powerpc.

As you already have an iBook G4, you could as well put Xcode on it (you can get the Mac SDKs - even for PowerPC - for free from Apple). Then try to write some Mac apps, as the Mac and iPhone APIs are very similar. If you like one of them, you'll most probably be happy with the other, too.

Answer 5

Free Stanford iPhone Dev Course

The 10-week course, iPhone Application Programming, is a hot ticket. It begins today and videos of the classes will be posted at Stanford on iTunes U two days after each class meeting (http://itunes.stanford.edu). Copies of the slides shown in class will be available there as well.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/april1/free-iphone-software-development-course-apple-040109.html

(channeling for qux who pointed this out in a comment)