ios Starting iOS development. A few questions

[hotosega]

Hello Neowin,

In September I am going to England for internship at a company that makes apps. I want to learn a bit about iOS development before I go there but I have a problem. I don't have a mac to practice. And buying one is also out of the question. (I know hackintosh is an option, but I don't want to break the license.) Can you give me some tips,guide,guidelines to get started on iOS development without practicing?

[Boz]

Hello Neowin,

In September I am going to England for internship at a company that makes apps. I want to learn a bit about iOS development before I go there but I have a problem. I don't have a mac to practice. And buying one is also out of the question. (I know hackintosh is an option, but I don't want to break the license.) Can you give me some tips,guide,guidelines to get started on iOS development without practicing?

It's going to be VERY difficult for you to code for iOS natively without a Mac. You are not breaking any licenses by using Hackintosh. I am doing iOS development on a hackintosh. I pay my iOS developer and Mac Developer fees to Apple and I buy their OS legally. There's nothing you are doing wrong.

Second, you could probably code in Obj-C on Windows but you it would be very difficult to work with native SDK.

You could look into Xamarin/Monotouch for iOS http://xamarin.com/?gclid=CLrHzIPWqrECFQF6hwodcSQA6A if you want to develop apps on Windows for iOS but this is not Apple official way. It's another framework type of thing.

If you have done Flash and Actionscript you could look into AIR and write native extensions for specific native OS API functionality or if you are good with HTML5/JS/CSS you can use some of the frameworks for building for iOS/Android etc like Titanium, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap etc which expose a limited number of APIs but allow you to build native apps with web technologies.

If you want pure Obj-C/Cocoa Touch and to build in Xcode no other way but on a Mac.

[hotosega]

Boz, thanks for your reply. I thought you may not install Mac OS X on non-apple hardware? If it's legal then I go for the hackintosh way. Thank you very much again for the reply :)

[threetonesun]

Boz, thanks for your reply. I thought you may not install Mac OS X on non-apple hardware? If it's legal then I go for the hackintosh way. Thank you very much again for the reply :)

It's not legal, in theory, but as Boz was saying, as long as you pay the Apple Developer fees, in the end Apple isn't going to care.

[Glassed Silver]

Of course it is legal, all you do is break an EULA.

Just make sure you actually buy the OS, so you're not pirating (illegal).

Actually, to be 100% legal you have to go this way:

Buy the single version (NOT the upgrade version, as you have no OS to upgrade from legally).

The family pack is not necessarily a full license, it might be an upgrade. Not sure. (It's definitely advertised as one)

Then, if you want, buy Lion or better yet, Mountain Lion (when available) from the App Store and upgrade to it.

Glassed Silver:mac

[whitebread]

You could always check out the Dragonfire SDK: http://www.dragonfiresdk.com/products.htm

[simplezz]

Couldn't you run OS X in VirtualBox? That way you don't have to modify your computer, or switch OS's just to do iOS development.

I like to test my Android apps in an ICS VirtualBox image. I don't know if it's possible to run iOS in a VBox though.

[Glassed Silver]

Couldn't you run OS X in VirtualBox? That way you don't have to modify your computer, or switch OS's just to do iOS development.

I like to test my Android apps in an ICS VirtualBox image. I don't know if it's possible to run iOS in a VBox though.

You can only run OS X in a VM that runs on OS X as a host OS afaik. (artificial contractual limitations by VM makers)

Could try installing a hackingtosh modded installer...

iOS runs your applications in the so called iOS Simulator that's part of the iOS SDK for Xcode by Apple.

Glassed Silver:mac