iPhone Compilation Without A Mac

[PointOfLight]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place and if it has been addressed before, but I did some rummaging around the forums and didn't really find an answer for my question.  I know when iPhone development was first introduced in GLBasic a Mac was required to make the actual builds and create the certificate for submission to Apple.  Is there any chance that has changed?  I've also been looking at the Airplay SDK, and while I haven't tested it to confirm the claims, supposedly I can compile an iPhone app without needing a Mac, and the SDK comes with a utility that says it will let me generate the appropriate certificate for submission to Apple.

At this point I don't have a Mac, or I obviously wouldn't be worrying about these things.  I can't really afford to get a Mac either, but the reality is that if I were to plunk down the money for a Mac, than I might as well just learn how to do native iPhone development.  I'm not going to spend a minimum of $600 for a machine that is basically used to compile an app I wrote somewhere else.

If GLBasic isn't capable of following through with the whole process, are there any services available that can take care of the Mac part for you?  I'm not particularly keen on this option, as that's how the DragonFire SDK gets around their users not having Macs, but again I can't shell out the money for a Mac right now.

Any insight not revolving around "just go buy a Mac" would be extremely helpful.  Thanks, and again I apologize if this topic has been beaten to death somewhere already.

[MrTAToad]

Unfortunately, you have to buy a Mac (and get XCode installed to compile it).

I'm surprised Apple allow the Airplay people to develop using Windows, as its against their license rules.

The way around it all would be to go hackintosh...

[Moru]

For apple it's just a question about letting them sell enough and then sue their asses into oblivion.

[PointOfLight]

Well I'm not exactly sure what Airplay does, but I've seen games with the Airplay logo on the App Store, so either Apple's allowing it or they don't realize what Airplay actually is / does (this would surprise me, but you never know).  I actually spent roughly 3 days trying to go the Hackintosh route and I never could get it to work, which I suspect was due to the fact that the machine I was using didn't have new enough hardware to run OSX.

I guess for now my dreams of iPhone development aren't meant to be (or at least not with GLBasic).

[MrTAToad]

Well, getting things onto the AppStore isn't terribly nice anyway - even more so if you want to make money out of it.

[Slydog]

Somebody should start a service to allow people to remote desktop into a sandboxed Mac, (with predefined development environments for different packages).
You could then compile your app, sign it with your certificate, and download/save the results.
Rent a Mac by the hour.
Only how would you get it onto your iPhone for testing!?  Darn, so close, ha.
(Would it be possible using 'Ad Hoc distribution'?)

It may be feasible if you run a computer cafe, and set up a Mac to allow development, you would get the locals at least.
Talk to the owner, he/she may see the potential for a new client type.

Or, if you can't buy a Mac, convince a friend to buy one. 

[Kuron]

I'm not going to spend a minimum of $600 for a machine that is basically used to compile an app I wrote somewhere else.

Actually, the baseline Mac Mini is now $699, and that is only for 2GB of RAM.  Add another $100 to knock it up to 4GB of RAM and actually make it usable. 

[Kitty Hello]

I got a 2nd hand iPhone plus a 2nd hand Mac Mini (which are very rare, unfortunately). So, plus the 80,- EUR for the one year SDK you can get started at about 500 to 600,- EUR I guess.

[shawnus]

I got a second hand macbook for £525 (about 1000usd I guess).

I was following several macbooks on ebay starting at & going for around $50-100- I just didnt have the confidence to put in a bid.

Regarding costs I had to spend another £25 on snow leopard & obviously buy an ipod touch. Then there is the $99 to join the apple dev programme, plus quite a lot of time & bandwidth (around 4Gb) spent downloading the xcode sdk & various updates.

[matchy]

As there is a newer Mac Mini, the older is mucn rarer now.

[Wampus]

Argh, dammit! I just found out I need Snow Leopard to compile with the iPhone SDK.

I was planning on upgrading an ancient G4 Power Mac to OS X Tiger just to compile for iPhone. That would only cost me $17 so it seemed like a great solution.

There is no way I can afford a Snow Leopard Mac right now. I guess I'll use someone else's Mac instead.

[MrTAToad]

You can do it with 10.5...

[Slydog]

From Wikipedia:

Apple states the following basic Leopard (version 10.5) system requirements, although, for some specific applications and actions (such as iChat backdrops) an Intel processor is required:[52]

    * Processor must be any Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 MHz and faster)
    * DVD drive (for installation of the operating system)
    * At least 512 MB of RAM (additional RAM (1 GB) is recommended for development purposes)
    * At least 9 GB of disk space available.

I'm not Macliterate, so I don't know where your system stands.

[Edit] "It stands right beside my desk, why?" 

[Wampus]

Thanks MrTAToad and Slydog. Hmm, so 10.5 might be possible after all. Pity the G4 I was offered doesn't meet the minimum specs!

You know, if I wasn't a 100% law abiding citizen and didn't do everything by the book I would be tempted to stick Snow Leopard on a USB drive and run it from my netbook, which happens to have compatible hardware. Just for the purposes of compiling iPhone apps that would have saved me a lot of money, if I was going to do it, which I'm not.

[edit] From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SDK:-

"The SDK requires an Intel Mac running Mac OS X Leopard or later. Other operating systems, including Microsoft Windows and older versions of Mac OS X, are not supported."

I don't know how much to trust the quote from above. There was no citation.

[matchy]

XCode 3.1.3 (iPhone 3 / iPod Touch) for OSX 10.5.x
XCode 3.2+  (iPhone 3 & 4 / iPod Touch / iPad) for OSX 10.6.x