How can I make my own iPhone app for myself? - iphone

I don't have an Apple computer, I just have an iPhone and some knowledge about language development. I want to create my own app for my own use, just for fun! I don't want to pay Apple for a developer account. I just want to develop my app and put it on my iPhone. I can either develop on Linux or Windows. How can I do that?

If you want to develop on an actual iPhone, you'll need a developer licence. To developer apps natively you will need a Mac running XCode.
There's lots of HTML5 libraries for making apps using javascript though. Maybe try out Phonegap or GameSalad

At the minimum you'll need to have OSX (Mac Operating system) to run Xcode/iphone emulator, you wont be able to do this without OSX.
EDIT:
You may be able to develop it using phone gap: http://phonegap.com/
You'll have to do testing on an adriod emulator, but I believe phonegap builds the app in the cloud. Good luck.

You can develop an app using adobe AIR or adobe Flash. Check out FlashDevelop for a free solution for making flash and air apps for everything from windows to android to iOS.
For a somewhat detailed tutorial on how to actually export an AIR project from FlashDevelop so you can install it on an iOS device, see:
http://www.codeandvisual.com/2011/exporting-for-iphone-using-air-27-and-flashdevelop-part-one-installation/
and FYI, this is not JUST for jailbroken iOS devices! :D

Native iOS applications can only be built in Xcode (which can only run on a Mac), and you need a developer membership to deploy those on an actual device (which costs about $100 a year). So, that’s the caveat: You can’t make native apps.
However, native apps aren’t the only option! There are two other approaches.
One way is to make a web app. These days, web apps can do almost everything that a native app can do (even access the camera). Unless you’re building something specialized (like a video editor, for example, or a game that needs to work with Bluetooth game controllers), you can probably make something as a web app. Years ago, I wasn’t happy with the flashcard apps on the market and wanted something custom but super simple to help me study JLPT vocabulary. At the time, I also didn’t have the money for a developer membership. I made it as a web app, and it worked great!
If you’re making a web app, you’ll need someplace to host it. There are lots of options. For example, the free tier on Firebase is plenty for a personal-use web app. You also might want to consider building the app using client-side scripting (like Javascript) so that you can host it statically, which will allow you to tell iOS to cache it so you can utilize it offline (Google “HTML offline manifest” for details).
The other way, if you have a friend with a developer account, is to build your app using a cross-platform framework like Flutter, where you don’t need a Mac to develop and test it, then ask your friend to make it for you. You’ll need to rebuild periodically (I think once a year) because your provisioning profile will expire.
If you use a framework like Flutter that can build both native AND web apps, that gives you the ability to run natively (if you have access to a Mac) or host it statically on someplace like Firebase Hosting (if you don’t).

Related

Iphone app using Phonegap and the OS and IDE I can use

I have a requirement from client to develop an iPhone application. As I am a dot net developer I thought it will be bit challenging for me. So I thought of developing it using phone gap. So before suggesting something to the client I need to make sure of certain points.
Do I really need a mac machine to develop this?
Since I am using only html5, css and js, can I develop it in Visual studio/Eclipse? I have already tried some samples in both these IDE. And once the app is ready I have read about using PhoneGap Build I can make it ready to use in iPhone...
But from the following link, what I understood is I need an apple computer, mac os and Xocde to develop it even though it is not a native mobile app.
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/phonegap/phonegap-development/
Please guide me with some insights before talking to the client.
Thanks.
PhoneGap Build is a cloud-based service built on top of the PhoneGap
framework. It allows you to easily build those same mobile apps in the
cloud. To get your application build just what you need is to simply
upload your web assets - a ZIP file of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, to
PhoneGap Build, after some time you’ll receive the download URLs for
all mobile platforms.
I read it from here , they also mentioned about installing SDKs
you might want to install some of the SDK emulators if you don’t own a
particular device that you want to test a build for.
Here in this link they have put a note
Since PhoneGap Build uses Apple's standard development process to
build applications, you will need to sign up for their developer
program to build iOS applications on PhoneGap Build. You will also
need a Mac to configure your certificate and provisioning profile.
Consider using a Mac Virtual machine.
You mainly need a mac to create key value chain pairs to sign your app and test it on a device. You can just get a Mac VM to do this is my recommendation. You can then use the phonegap build service to compile your www folder for iOS
Here is a good demo for multiple index files to have one solution base
http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2012/07/13/mcrooster-a-phonegap-application-with-a-single-codebase/
I think you should do a bit more research before jumping into bed with PhoneGap for the sake of not being an Objective-C developer. PhoneGap has its limitations, and my experience of it compared with native app development is pretty poor.

How do you build an iPhone App with MobiOne?

I'm using MobiOne to build an App (I don't have a Mac or know Obj-C), but I'm wondering how to compile the App into Obj-C. Has anyone tried this? I have my design done and tested in the emulator, but do not see how to build the code.
My understanding is that MobiOne is not designed to be uploaded to Apple's app store. You can use Phone Gap to help get your app into a native environment since MobiOne uses web technologies. Phone Gap should allow you to publish to the app store, but the app is still subject to Apple's quality control system.
EDIT: You will still need a mac to publish the app. Or you can just use the app as a website on your device(s).
You can build the app with the Mobione built-in compiler. Go to the "Project" menu and click "Build iOS app" and your app will be compiled. You cannot compile with Obj-C.
Compile it into an iOS native app using Mobione on Windows. Upload it to the App Store using Apple's Application Uploader on a Mac. Easy.
According to Apple, you are not supposed to make iPhone apps without a mac. Also learning objective c MIGHT just be a good first start before making an app.
The first comment in your question provides a link, and one of the first paragraphs in that link states this:
"The traditional approach to iOS application development requires developers to create their apps using Apple’s Objective-C programming tools and Macintosh(tm) hardware. MobiOne runs on your Windows OS (Win7 to XP) hardware and offers developers an alternative cross-platform programming model based on HTML5 open web standards and virtual device services, e.g., contacts, camera, audio... "
Of course this allows you to do it, but that doesn't mean that the appstore will accept your app if you try and submit it through MobiOne. I'm not too sure on the subject, but I would do some research and figure out if apple allows you to do this.

developing iphone apps on windows is it worth the hassel

I'm only after a simple solution and won't be developing anything particularly complex. But I'm wondering whether the hassals of developing an iPhone app NOT on MacOS are really that significant to avoid giving it a shot. Bearing in mind that I do have access to a mac every now and again. So I would be able to compile it using the official Apple supported SDK, but I just want to be able to develop it in my own environment (windows laptop).
I heard someone mention a while ago that there are various objective C compilers that allow writing code in various other web technologies as well. Are these really valid.
And am I alone in thinking Apple's whole attitude towards this is totally imoral. Charging $200 for the privelege of having your app unequivocally rejected etc etc and then not being allowed to look directly at Steve Jobs or his golden retrievers.
It depends on what sort of app you're developing - web app, or native iphone app. There are benefits and drawbacks to both.
You can make (and host) an iphone web app on any platform, and write it in pretty much any language. There are projects like iui to make your web app look more like an iphone app. You also don't have to pay to get into the iPhone developer program, but your app isn't available through the app store - it's just a web site. In the newest version of the iPhone OS you can bookmark a site to your site to the "desktop" - making it possible to launch your web app just like any other iPhone app.
If you're making a native iPhone app, again, it depends what sort of app you're making. If it's a game, you can develop it in C (ObjectiveC is a superset of C) and OpenGL ES, and just make a thin ObjectiveC iPhone app wrapper to launch your game. If you're making a "regular" iPhone app with widgets, etc. this is very difficult (if not impossible) without developing on a Mac - in addition to ObjectiveC you'll need the Mac and iPhone libraries - things like Cocoa, etc. that just aren't available on any other platform.
There are also some cross-compiler options here too - MonoTouch for Mono/.NET, Flash cross-compiling and probably more. You'd still need a Mac / iPhone developer account to ultimately test the result in iPhone simulators or on an actual device.
As for how 'imoral' this is of Apple/Steve Jobs - it's the difference between a closed platform and an open platform - some video game systems are also closed platforms also and you pay for the privilege of developing an app for them - and they have the option to censor / prohibit your app/game from their platform. The iPhone is just the most current and popular version of this. If you don't like it - develop an Android app instead :)
If you don't want to work on a Mac, you should look into developing a web-application for iPhone.
A) You can develop it on your pc
B) You can test everything on your iPod or iPhone
C) No, review by Apple

Is it possible to download and run IPhone apps on an IPhone emulator?

I am tasked to provide an IPhone client app for our SaaS website. I have never written an IPhone application, nor do I have an IPhone at the moment. Before I can decide whether or not I want to do this myself or outsource this, I'd like to try a few apps myself to get a feeling for the UI.
Is there any IPhone emulator I might use to download and run apps from the App Store? I do have an Intel-based Mac if that helps.
No, this isn't possible. The first major hurdle is that the apps from the app store are compiled for the ARM processor, and your Mac is x86.
The only thing you can do is compile projects from source. Luckily, Apple has many sample projects which demonstrate various features, including the UI widgets.

iPhone App Development on Ubuntu [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Starting iPhone app development in Linux?
Is there a way to use Ubuntu Linux for developing iPhone applications destined to be listed on Apples app store ?
Many of the other solutions will work, but they all make use of the open-toolchain for the iPhone SDK. So, yes, you can write software for the iPhone on other platforms... BUT...
Since you specify that you want your app to end up on the App Store, then, no, there's not really any way to do this. There's certainly no time effective way to do this. Even if you only value your own time at $20/hr, it will be far more efficient to buy a used intel Mac, and download the free SDK.
Not officially, no. It's just Objective-C though and the compiler's open source - you could probably get the headers and compile it and somehow get the binary on the device. Another option is compiling on the device. All these options will require jailbreaking though.
A Mac Mini is just $599...
There are two things I think you could try to develop iPhone applications.
You can try the Aptana mobile wep app plugin for eclipse which is nice, although still in early stage. It comes with a emulator for running the applications so this could be helpful
You can try cocoa
(Extra) Here is a nice guide I found of guy who managed to get the iPhone SDK running in ubuntu, hope this help -_-. iPhone on Ubuntu
I found one interesting site which seems pretty detailed on how you could setup a ubuntu for iPhone development. But it's a little old from November 2008 for the SDK 2.0.
Ubuntu 8.10 for iPhone open toolchain SDK2.0
The instructions also include something about the Android SDK/Emulator which you can leave out.
With some tweaking and lots of sweat, it's probably possible to get gcc to compile your Obj-C source on Ubuntu to a binary form that will be compatible with an iPhone ARM processor. But that can't really be considered "iPhone Application development" because you won't have access to all the proprietary APIs of the iPhone (all the Cocoa stuff).
Another real problem is you need to sign your apps so that they can be made available to the app store. I know of no other tool than XCode to achieve that.
Also, you won't be able to test your code, as they is no open source iPhone simulator... maybe you might pull something off with qemu, but again, lots of effort ahead for a small result.
So you might as well buy a used mac or a Mac mini as it has been mentioned previously, you'll save yourself a lot of effort.
Probably not. While I can't log into the Apple Development site, according to this post you need an intel mac platform.
http://tinleyharrier.blogspot.com/2008/03/iphone-sdk-requirements.html
It can be done!!!!!!
There is someone who did it.
Enjoy :)
There are several way to do it, may decide to go the native way by downloading a VM application for linux and the install Mac OS in your VM and then download the Xcode application for mac But the true is i tried this path but it was really long so i decide to get sencha touch and phonegap for mobile phone,here the sencha-touch is a javascript framework that will help you in developing the interfaces and the phonegap is also javascript library which will help to access the feature of your Iphone or any oher mobile platform
I'm using sencha-touch and phonegap ,its really work for me
Perhaps the best way would be to implement your app as a web app. I think you can also make web apps that run direct on the phone, without internet access or a remote server.
Web app, sounds lame? But a lot can be done with DHTML / HTML5 / JavaScript. It's a rare app that requires more power and couldn't be done as a web app. And you get pretty good cross platform with Web / JavaScript - the browsers vary a bit but a good web dev can write one web app that works pretty much everywhere.
Of course if you're writing a high-performance 3D game, the browser might not deliver what you need! maybe in a few years... Apparently some Google hackers ported Quake 2 to HTML5 already!
http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/browsers/10-html5-games-paving-the-way/