Using iPhone device as a test device - iphone

I have 2 newbie questions:
Can I use my iPhone for both personal and test purposes?
Can the tests damage my iPhone, even if I try to fix all bugs in simulator first?
Thanks for the attention and patience guys! =D

Of course you can use your device for personal as well testing purpose only thing is to test on the device you will have to buy a developer account from Apple which cost $99 for one year. No the test is not going to damage your phone. If there is any bug the app crashes (not all the bug cause the Crash, screen freezes etc.) but that is not going to damage your device.

Related

Do I need to buy Iphone for Iphone development?

Do I need to buy Iphone to develop Iphone applications on MacBook Pro? Or is Iphone SDK for the job?
Thanks.
Technically no, but obviously it would be handy.
Xcode provides an iPhone simulator that can handle most testing (but without support for accelerometer or microphone).
All in all, if you plan on doing iPhone development seriously - get an iPhone.
Technically you could use the emulator with the SDK but you really want some raw devices to test on due to subtle differences.
The iPod touch does a great job for testing apps on a real device. Its performances are very closed to the iPhone and it is much cheaper.
Technically no, unless you building apps related to accelerometer, microphone, sms or auto calling applications. The SDK comes with the iPhone simulator which is more than handy
You can use the Xcode iPhone simulator as well as the iPad simulator to test your code, all of which is free. The only issue will be accessing certain filemanagement which cannot be debugged on a simulator. However, you must have a computer running on Mac OS X and a valid Apple ID to download Xcode. Finally, in order to submit Apps into the App Store, you must buy a $100 developer's license with Apple.
Hope that help! And iPhone development is a ton of fun :)
Thommy
I highly recommend to get the device you're developing for. Since some issues will only will only come up by really using your app as intended.
The touchscreen and it's behavior for example can't really be testet in the simulator. If you want to do more than the next "Fart App" you should invest the money in at least one actuel iOS device.
I will speak from personal experience with a financial prespective
Can you afford it or is the short term compensation from the work going to cover the cost? The latest models are pretty expensive, so I would suggest looking for good deals on models that are a couple of years old. When I say short term, I mean 3 years or less. Because after that, there is a good chance that you are going to need to buy a newer model to take advantage of the SDK features available at that time.
Even if you can afford it do you need it immediately? Are you soon going to be developing features that are completely dependent on hardware and impossible with a simulator ? If no please push the purchase further down the line, by which time you would have made some money (or not) and you can buy a newer model.
Having a latest device gives you the freedom to try out and build apps using the latest SDK features that Apple rolls out, so you can stay ahead in the game. On the flip side, it would be good for development only as long as at least one of the apps that you are developing for runs the highest version of iOS supported by the device at any particular time. For example I bought an iPhone 5S some years ago and now none of the apps I am working on run on iOS 12. So I have very little use for it. Ah I guess the vicious upgrade cycle gets developers too :(

Do we need an iPhone/iPad for its development?

Today i was going through an website and found something over this iphone and ipad development projects. I had a question whether a developer requires an iphone to actually work with or is there any other simulator type device where we can test it out too.
It would be also great if you can share some docs on getting started.
Thanks.
We have applications that run without a problem on the simulator and crash on the device, so I'd say yes. You might delay it for a bit, and work on the main aspects and buy the device later, but you should have it.
You should start at the iPhone Dev center and depending on your knowledge of Objective C, try some tutorials for it. One of the first tutorials I read about Objective C, and which helped me a lot, is here
You can simulate certain gestures and actions while running the simulator: the developer.apple article is here
You can test many aspects without having an iPad.
There are, however, some that you cannot.
Touch
Acceleration sensor
3G internet
much more
I strongly recommend buying an iPad / iPhone to test the user interface. A PC and the iPad have very different user interaction models, it's hard to create a native feeling app without having an actual device.
You can develop with the iPhone SDK which include an emulator. http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action but you would probably be better off having one of the devices if your developing a complex application. For working with Camera's or sensors it's best to have a real device to test you code on.
I dont think there are any devices that run the iPhone system. If there are they are probably illegal.
There is emulator build in XCode.
You dont need a device to run your code etc, but try to test the touch and other sensors in the emulator.
So basically if you are planning on shipping something bigger than helloworld you probably should get the Apple device.
There must be an emulator (I'm not sure, that's a guess), but as with any other development you better have a real device as well so that you have better chances of reproducing problems customers will report.
For iPad development you must have Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Test iPhone App on physical iPhone rather than simulator

I've just made a basic Hello World app for the iPhone. Compiling and running works fine for iPhone Simulator. But now I'd like to put it on my real physical iPhone, to test it. Is there any way to do this, or do I have to pay $100, put it in the app store and download it (with the chance Apple doesn't like it and just deletes it (what happened to Google Latitude too))?
Thanks in advance.
Nope, I'll not jailbreak it.
Once you have an iPhone developer's account, you can install a provisioning profile on your iPhone which allows to deploy your own applications to it. You'll have to pay the fee to Apple, though.
No. Transfering it to any iPhone for beta testing requires access to the online iPhone Developers Portal. You'll only get in there and get to generate the certificates with a developers licence.
AFAIK you can not transfer your self-developed tool to your own iPhone. At least, that's what I've read...

How do I compile for the device without a certificate?

I may just be looking in all the wrong places, but is there no way to compile a Cocoa Touch application for ARM without paying for a developer account and certificate?
EDIT: To clarify: I am trying to build for a jailbroken device. I simply want to test code on-device without paying for anything.
You're not going to like this answer, but I and everyone else on SO will tell you that developing for a jailbroken device is 10 times worse than developing legitimately with a developer account. It's not really that expensive, and if you don't have a mac, a low end Mac Mini isn't all that costly either. If you would just want to get some mobile handset practice in, might I suggest developing with Google's Android. The SDK is free and you can get a nifty plugin for Eclipse that has a device emulator as well as a GUI builder. The only downside is that the device support is minimal at the moment. But hey, you can be on the bleeding edge of a technological revolution.
Unless you have jailbroken your iPhone/iPod Touch an Apple iPhone Developer account is required.

iPhone Development and Testing on Jalibroken iPhone?

Other than the obvious ongoing legal issues surrounding jalibreaking the iPhone, does using an jailbroken phone for "official legal SDK development" cause any issues?
Bascially can a jailbroken iPhone work fine for a production development environment, allowing the same provisioning, testing, etc as a stock iPhone in terms of the SDK and related processes?
As far as i know. there is no problem to use a jailbroken iPhone as your development iPhone.
I test all my applications on a jailbroken and a non-jailbroken phone and didn't found any differences yet.
If you have jailbroken your device and broken authenticity (to run unsigned code) it is possible you have a code signing issue that would not be aware to you unless you check the app on a non-broken device. However if you are caught up in the acceptance process a jailbroken device can be useful because you get to test on device earlier :P
That said this is very unlikely seeing as the amount of trouble you have to go through to get to that point almost guarantees you have some clue as to what you are doing.
The Apple Developer agreement has been updated to forbid developers from jailbreaking (but you did say aside from legal issues)...
To answer your question directly, no I have not had any problems :-)