I know that you need a Mac and Xcode and the SDK. But is it possible to develop apps for jaibroken devices and/or regular devices using Windows/Linux platforms ?
Edit
Also, what's the lowdown on the Airplay SDK ? Heard that it's pretty good but doesnt offer the same performance as an app developed through Xcode.
Found this PDF Document, for what it's
Actually you can, and that's what programming is all about. If you're a tough programmer you can do lots of cross platform and cross hardware stuff. Don't forget that no matter how cool Steeve Jobs is (or pretends to be) for Apple and maybe even non-Apple consumers they care about their profit and would never declare officially that building apps for iPhone and other iOS devices is possible on PC too. This way they make you get a Mac. They've been very successful in making people believe that building apps for iPhone is not possible otherwise.
There's a toolchain for Linux platforms, but it doesn't have Interface Builder or other niceties. Here's an example application that uses it.
You may be looking for theos. Have a look at this thread.
Of course, you will have to have your toolchain installed, which shouldn't be that hard. There are a lot of projects which involve having a Linux iOS toolchain. Windows is another story, though :P (not saying it's impossible!).
Short answer is no - fundamentally iPhone OS uses Cocoa, which is a closed framework only distributed with XCode. Some people have thought about reverse engineering (like Wine) but I don't think anybody has really been successful thus far, let alone use Cocoa as a development environment.
You might be able to create some debian packages (dpkg) that can be run in the background or via the mobile terminal. This is kind of limiting though, because you don't have access to GUI and your app won't be very intuitive.
There seems to be a development platform for porting Blender game logic into a full-fledged iphone game. Maybe you could avoid Xcode this way, but I doubt it.
http://sio2interactive.com/
You could run OSX within Virtualbox/VMWare Player but that's not allowed by Apple.
Don't listen to other people who insist that you HAVE to get a Mac. You just need to download a copy of cracked VMWare with pre-installed Mac from http://thepiratebay.org/. You also need to download a copy of cracked VMWare player from the same site. Then download Xcode inside the Mac. No need to pay for anything. I've been using it and working great.
Short answer -- YES.
Although i'm not entirely sure what you mean by "ONLY" for jailbroken devices, but if you have any experience at all with flash scripts or action scripts then check out Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5. It's a program that lets you design and write your own apps for ipod/iphone/ipad.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash.html
I've used it for years and find it perfect.
I'm interested in making apps for the iphone. I was wondering if it were possible to make apps, WITHOUT Xcode. the only reason is because I'm dirt poor, and can't afford an Apple.
If it's games you're interested in developing, then another option might be to take a look at Unity (http://unity3d.com/). This would let you develop on the PC for free in a friendly environment for a beginner. If you then develop something that you decide you want to publish on iPhone, then at that point you could invest in a Mac and just rebuild the Unity app for iPhone on that.
Also, Unity lets you write scripts in both C# and Java so you wouldn't have to learn Obj-C.
The short answer is no. The long answer is "not exactly," but you can get started in some ways while you're working on getting access to a Mac you can do the work you'd like to do on.
"XCode" is more or less really two things:
(1) an IDE
(2) a toolchain with a C/ObjC/C++ compiler (really a version of gcc) and a big library of apps
You don't have to use #1 in order to build iPhone Apps, though it's genuinely helpful. You can get by with #2.
But without #2, you're going to have a hard time building an App you can sell in the App store.
So, it depends on what your goal is.
If it really is to build an app and get it out there, the easiest path is probably going to be to find some way to get access to a machine running OS (probably 10.5 and up) you can do development on. That might be talking a friend who has one into letting you spend some scheduled time on it, or it might be working and saving up for a used intel-based Mac mini (probably something you could get for $300), or it might be turning a PC you've got into a Hackintosh (or maybe setting up a Hackintosh VM on the PC if you're sharing it with others who might not want it transformed thusly :).
If your goal is to start learning how to do things while you work out how you're going to do the above, though, the good news is that it's not hard to get a hold of tools that will help you learn the technologies/languages involved in iPhone apps. Like I said earlier, Apple's compiler is really just a version of gcc. You can probably install gcc on your machine and write objective C programs with it. You could also look into GNUStep which could help you get familiar with a lot of the concepts and practices underlying how the Cocoa libraries work for the iPhone and OS X. And you could learn OpenGL ES, which would be great help if you ever end up working on an iPhone game.
Actually You can develop apps without a Mac. You can use a number of languages and tools that enable writing apps for iOS like:
- Python
- PhoneGap
- Appcelerator
- Mono
- Unity3D
- Unreal Engine
These all can export to iOS.
The only step that requires a Mac is publishing to the app store. But You can use any Mac for that, so You can publish from a friend's/neighbour's or actually anyone's Mac. That is the last step when You're sure everything is running perfectly. Perhaps Your application will earn You Your own Mac.
Also there are a number of publishing service providers in the internet (which don't cost nearly as much as a Mac). I don't remember any particular one at the moment, but I'm sure if You search You will find many. Good luck!
Unfortunately, although there are 'alternatives' (phonegap, mono touch, etc.) I believe you ultimately need Xcode and its tools to package/sign/publish your applications.
If you are really motivated though, you can look about ways of installing Mac OS X on a PC, though that is beyond the scope of this website.
In short, you need a mac. There a number of screwed up ways to do this without a mac, but for all intents and purposes you need a mac. A mac mini you can buy used for $300 on ebay will do the trick. You don't need a powerful machine.
Though Xcode itself is free it does require an Intel based Mac running Snow Leopard. You have 2 options:
Buy a refurbished Mac Pro or Mac mini from Apple website. They are not that expensive. You can use non-Apple peripherals with them to bring down the cost. And you will not be disappointed with quality.
Use Hackintosh to run the OS X on other Intel platform. Its hacky, difficult (carshes) and illegal.
Update:
For Objective C you can refer a pretty good documentation of Objective C language at iPhone developer portal. There are many other documents like memory management and human interface guidelines which should help you get started.
Once you have developed the familiarity with Objective C, you can then browse through various programming guides on iPhone development centre. If you want to follow a systematic approach, you may refer to "Beginning iPhone Development" book which I found pretty good.
Yes it's possible to develop applications for the mac/ipad/iphone without Xcode and without a mac/ipad/iphone.I own a imac,an ipad,and and a mac book pro.I tried to develop in xcode.
After some quick search on the internet I found this http://www.gnustep.org/. This is a framework you can use to develop in the objective C language,using GCC (the GNU compiler).There are other tools you can use,like GNU STEP Application project:this seems to be a sort of IDE (I didn't test it yet).
Yes and no. You can use alternative SDK's but they can be a pain to use and don't offer the publish/signing capabilities that Xcode does.
Is there any MacOS virtual machine that can run on PC?
Is there any source to get it?
What is the best way to develop apps for iphone?
Yes all the developer tools are OSX only.
There are lots of iPhone development books out there go check out amazon and find one with some good reviews and that will get you started.
You might not, in the strictest terms, have to get a Mac to develop for iPhone; but it will be extremely helpful. Apple is relatively talented at squashing efforts directed towards Hackintoshes and virtual machines running OS X.
The shortest answer that will give you the least hassle is: Yes you need a Mac.
But, as far as I know there are a few possibilites, that try to reimplement some Cocoa Frameworks (however they might be Mac OS X only and not iPhone): GNUStep is an example.
But I don't think you get something aquivalent to Xcode (the IDE for iPhone development) this way.
And I think there are some OSX86 Virtual Machines (however these seem to be against Apple's EULA and thus seem to be clearly illegal so I won't point you anywhere to get them).
So to conclude - if you want to develop for iPhone: getting a Mac is the easiest way, even though not cheap.
Hope this helps.
The short answer is - yes.
One possibility for learning some of what you need to know before getting a Mac is GNUstep.
However, GNUstep is mainly useful for learning Objective C, especially since it provides many of the classes that the Cocoa toolkit for iPhone does. This can be run on Windows.
It doesn't, however, support some of the key 2.0 language features that are used 'all the time' in any sample code.
What it will allow you to do is design a UI using their UI designer GORM, and use a near-identical message-based system for implementing a UI, and you could theoretically write Objective C classes in GNUstep and then use them on iPhone.
However, to compile an app for iPhone you basically need to have a Mac, because then you can get the key for signing an app, etc. Since you need to get a Mac at some point, there's really little point in going the much harder route of using GNUstep first and learning a more limited implementation, unless you really need to get started before funds are available.
Despite the new SDK terms that can other programming languages, if you're really wanting to start without a Mac, I'd probably be tempted to look at something like Unity, or perhaps even Appcelerator Titanium, and figuring out all the non-platform-specific logic first on whatever platform (Unity has a free version that can be run on Windows, for example).
I'm not that big a fan of xcode, but is is far and a way the best IDE for Objective C development simply because there's almost nothing else out there.
There are, as always, other options. If you do a web app type project, you can implement the website and test a lot of it in a browser. Furthermore, since Android and iPhone browsers are both WebKit based, you can use the free Android SDK to see what pages look like on a comparable mobile device. And since you can use C and C++ classes as well as Objective C (N.B. not for the GUI, since that needs the Objective C extensions for messaging between objects), another option for making a start without a Mac would be to use Eclipse, QT Creator or some other C/C++ IDE to implement non-GUI classes, so long as you make sure you don't use platform-specific libraries.
But the end of the long answer is still that whatever you do, to compile a proper iPhone app you'll be using xcode and associated tools to finally build it and sign it, and so you need a Mac in the end. If you want to create something targetting the iPhone and won't have access to a Mac, then perhaps you're best off looking at creating an iPhone-adapted website using iui or a similar toolkit to give the site a suitable look and feel.
Actually I don't care too much about Mac OS X development. I want to do only iPod Touch and iPhone development. But anyways, I started learning Cocoa and Objective-C. But it seems like there are many differences between Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, so I am wondering if I am actually wasting my time. Should I just jump directly into iPhone topics?
There is lots of overlap, but if your purpose in learning is to do iPhone programming, then by all means learn iPhone programming directly.
As a side-effect, you will be able to pick up Mac application programming more easily if you should ever have such a desire.
I think you could go either Cocoa-Cocoa Touch or Cocoa Touch-Cocoa and still have a good grasp on what it takes to program for either platform. I tried Cocoa development on my Mac a few years ago and was pretty confused. I finally decided to take up iPhone programming, and picked up Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, worked through that book over a few weeks, and I understand things much, much better now. Really, all it takes is a good explanation of Mac programming. I'm fairly confident I could pick up regular Cocoa programming with far less effort now. Had I started with regular Cocoa programming, I'm fairly confident I would have been able to pick up iPhone programming fairly easily. There are differences, but there are a lot of (very cool) similarities between the two platforms.
PS, I highly, highly recommend that book if you're really interested in iPhone development. It was worth every penny.
Normally I would agree with the other answers here: directly learn the topic you're interested in. But in the case of Cocoa/Cocoa Touch, you'd be better off reading Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd ed. by Aaron Hillegass. It's just that damn good!
There are similarities but if the goal is iPhone development, you'll be much better off starting to learn on that platform and then stepping up to the Mac. There's a lot more going on both in the UI frameworks, and in terms of what IB can do so you may well get used to some aspect of the system that is not present on the iPhone (or done differently).
The NS foundation classes are much the same but even there are differences.
Also beware that the simulator will compile and run Mac code that will not compile or run on the phone itself, when using the docs always keep them focused on the iPhone SDK section.
One difference between Cocoa Touch and Cocoa is in the area of memory management.
If you happen to be learning Objective-C for the very first time (or possibly any C-based language for the very first time) I would start with Cocoa Touch.
My reasoning is that the iPhone does not support automatic garbage collection, and you may find it easier to learn the (more difficult? certainly less automatic) way first, then as you migrate to OS X development appreciate the shortcuts that the OS X platform gives you.
If you learn Cocoa development on Leopard initially, you may be frustrated at the seemingly more primitive memory management available in the iPhone.
The two are very similar, though.
Bottom line is if you want to learn to program for the iPhone, go ahead and jump to the iPhone. Mac OS X development is not a prerequisite, just a very similar skillset.
I've taught Mac developers and iPhone developers, and my experience is that it's generally best to learn Mac first, particularly because you can get a solid grounding in Cocoa using Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, which is still the best book on learning the Cocoa patterns around. So far I haven't found a good iPhone book that teaches the key issues you need to know, and that differentiate Cocoa/Touch programming from Java, .NET and other systems. I've written a couple of articles recently that may be helpful as you think about this:
iPhone Course Syllabus
Review of iPhone Developer’s Cookbook
I've went through about the same question as you, though my initial focus was more on Mac development, the iPhone came later. I'm by no means an expert cocoa coder yet, but things are improving rapidly. I find that the things I learned about cocoa on the Mac come in quite handy on the iPhone; picking up iPhone development certainly went a lot quicker than my first steps in cocoa on the Mac...
In practice, I find both skills come in handy. I'm making an iPhone game, but the data set it uses (the actual puzzles) are created using a small cocoa app I've developed for the Mac. Is there a specific reason why you don't want to learn Mac development? You don't need additional development/designing tools for your game?
(screenshot of the mac app: http://www.qixis.com/images/edit16-screenshot.png)
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Is there any way to tinker with the iPhone SDK on a Windows machine? Are there plans for an iPhone SDK version for Windows?
The only other way I can think of doing this is to run a Mac VM image on a VMWare server running on Windows, although I'm not too sure how legal this is.
It's certainly possible to develop on a Windows machine, in fact, my first application was exclusively developed on the old Dell Precision I had at the time :)
There are three routes;
Install OSx86 (aka iATKOS / Kalyway) on a second partition/disk and dual boot.
Run Mac OS X Server under VMWare (Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, read the update below).
Use a framework and/or toolset, which allows developing on Windows, like Delphi XE4 with the mac-in-cloud service, which can build without MacOS device need. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.
Other honorable mentions are Flutter, Xamarin and similar; which may at end need actual MacOS device for final build (but you can test on Android till then, as they're cross-platform).
The first route requires modifying (or using a pre-modified) image of Leopard that can be installed on a regular PC. This is not as hard as you would think, although your success/effort ratio will depend upon how closely the hardware in your PC matches that in Mac hardware - e.g. if you're running a Core 2 Duo on an Intel Motherboard, with an NVidia graphics card you are laughing. If you're running an AMD machine or something without SSE3 it gets a little more involved.
If you purchase (or already own) a version of Leopard then this is a gray area since the Leopard EULA states you may only run it on an "Apple Labeled" machine. As many point out if you stick an Apple sticker on your PC you're probably covered.
The second option is more costly. The EULA for the workstation version of Leopard prevents it from being run under emulation and as a result, there's no support in VMWare for this. Leopard server, however, CAN be run under emulation and can be used for desktop purposes. Leopard server and VMWare are expensive, however.
If you're interested in option 1) I would suggest starting at Insanelymac and reading the OSx86 sections.
I do think you should consider whether the time you will invest is going to be worth the money you will save though. It was for me because I enjoy tinkering with this type of stuff and I started during the early iPhone betas, months before their App Store became available.
Alternatively, you could pick up a low-spec Mac Mini from eBay. You don't need much horsepower to run the SDK and you can always sell it on later if you decide to stop development or buy a better Mac.
Update: You cannot create a Mac OS X Client virtual machine for OS X 10.6 and earlier. Apple does not allow these Client OSes to be virtualized. With Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, Apple has changed its licensing agreement in regards to virtualization. Source: VMWare KnowledgeBase
Xamarin is a solid choice. It was purchased by Microsoft and is now built directly into Visual Studio. You code in C#. With all the updates and features they are adding, you can do everything but submit to the App Store from Windows, even compile, build and deploy to an iOS device.
For games, Unity 3D is a great option. The editor is free to use for development, and even for distribution (if you have less than 100K USD in annual revenue). Unity supports iOS, Android and most other platforms. It may be possible to use Unity's "Cloud Build" feature to avoid having to use a Mac for deployment, although by default Unity actually spits out an Xcode project when building for iOS.
Other options:
PhoneGap (html/javascript) also works. It isn't quite as nice for gaming, but it's pretty decent for regular GUI applications.
Flutter (dart) is a free cross platform mobile app development framework from Google. Write your code in Dart.
React Native (javascript) is another popular cross-platform framework created by Facebook.
Note that: for all of these options, all or most of the development can be done on Windows, but a MacOS device is still required to build a binary for submission to the App Store. One option is to get a cheap MAC Mini to do your final build.
If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can install the iphone-gcc toolchain onto the iPhone through Cydia and that way you can just compilie the apps on the iPhone. Apps that are developed this way can still be submitted to the App Store.
And although Mr Valdez said it is a grey area (which it is), jailbreaking is incredibly easy and pretty much risk free. Yes, it voids your warrenty but you can just do a restore and they will never know.
Most of "so called Windows solutions for iOS development without Mac" require Mac at the end just to sign and send to app store. I checked a few, not all though (who has the time?)
At the end it's just too much trouble to learn "their super special easy way to program iOS without Objective-C", they have lots of bugs. Really the goal they are setting is unachievable in my view.
Also a lot of time they make you use Objective-C equivalent statements simply in another language. They kind of look the same but there are always subtle differences that you have to learn on top of obj-c. Which also makes even less sense, because now instead of learning less you have to learn more. So where is the gain?
Also they cost a lot, because they are very hard to develop.
Many lack any debugging abilities whatsoever.
In my honest opinion, if you are a hard-core iOS developer then for sure buy the best Mac and learn objective-c. It's expensive and takes time, but if it's your path, it's worth it.
For an occasional use, it's just easier to rent a remote Mac service, like XCodeClub.com
The SDK is only available on OS X, forcing you to use a mac. If you don't want to purchase a mac you can either run OS X on a virtual machine on your windows box, or you can install OS X on your PC.
In my experience the virtual machine solution is unusably slow (on a core2 duo laptop with 2G ram). If you feel like trying it search for the torrent. It's probably not worthwhile.
The other option is to install OS X on your PC, commonly referred to as a hackintosh. Hackintoshes work quite well - my friend just sold his mac because his Dell quad core hackintosh was actually much faster than the apple hardware (and cost about 1/3).
Of course both of these options are likely counter to some licensing scheme, so proceed at your own risk.
You can use WinChain
Quoting the project page:
It's the easiest way to build the iPhone toolchain on a Windows XP/Vista computer, which in turn, can take Objective-C source code that you write using their UIKit Headers (included with winChain) and compile it into an application that you can use on your iPhone.
You don't need to own a Mac nor do you need to learn Objective-C. You can develop in different environments and compile into Objective-C later on.
developing for the iphone and ipad by runing osx 10.6(snow leopard)
This article one of our developers wrote gives a pretty comprehensive walk through on installing OS X Snow Leopard on Windows using iBoot, then installing Vmware (with instructions), then getting your iPhone dev environment going... and a few extra juicy things. Super helpful for me.
Hope that helps. It uses Phonegap so you can develop on multiple smart phone platforms at once.
You can use Tersus (free, open source).
A devkit that allows one to develop iPhone apps in Objective-C, C++ or just plain C with Visual Studio:
Check it out at iOS build env
You can build iPhone apps directly within Visual Studio (2008, 2010, Express).
Pretty neat, it even builds IPA files for your app after a successful compilation. The code works as is on jailbroken devices, for the rest of the planet I believe the final compilation & submission to the App Store has to be done on a Mac. But still, it enables you to develop using a well-known IDE.
Of course, you can write Objective-C code in notepad or other programs and then move it to a Mac to compile.
But seriously, it depends on whether you are developing official applications to put in App Store or developing applications for jailbroken iPhone. To write official applications, Apple iPhone SDK which requires an Intel Mac seems to be the only practical way. However, there is an unofficial toolchain to write applications for jailbroken iPhones. You can run it on Linux and Windows (using Cygwin).
Try macincloud.com It allows you to rent a mac and access it through RDP remote control. You can then use your PC to access a mac and then develop your apps.
You will soon be able to use Adobe Flash CS 5 to create Apps for the iPhone on Windows:
flashcs 5
flashcs5 apps for iphone
Hooray! You can now more easily accomplish this with the latest Xamarin.iOS, using a network-linked mac providing the build and deployment capabilities.
See here for more details:
introduction to xamarin ios for visual studio
If you want it to be legitimate, you have two options, cloud based Mac solutions or cross-platform development tools.
You may consider the hackintosh approach or virtual machines if you don't care about legal stuff. If you have a decent PC, running a virtual machine would be the easiest way to go. You may never know which hardware will have driver issues on a hackintosh.
I've tried all these approaches and they all have pros and cons, but for the second group, I feel kind of guilty. I develop apps to make a living and I wouldn't want to rip off someone else for it.
If you are making a small project, cloud based Macs may prove useful. Rent it for a short time, develop your project and off you go. Don't bother learning anything new.
However, if your project is getting big, cross-platform frameworks seem to be the only alternative. The critical thing is that you need to choose wisely. There are so many hybrid frameworks, but what they do can be summarized in one sentence as "diplaying web pages in an app wrapper" and developers' negative experience with hybrid frameworks also affects native frameworks.
I tried three of these (Titanium, Smartface and Xamarin) and they all claim to produce "real native output" and in my opinion their claims are correct. You need to test and see it yoursrlf, it's not easy to describe the native feeling. In a previous comment, it was indicated that it takes some effort to learn these platforms, but once you get to know them, you can develop not just iOS applications but Android applications as well, all with the common code base. And of course, they are much cheaper than a cloud Mac. Some of them are even free. You would need a Mac only for store submission.
If you know JavaScript, try Titanium and Smartface and if you know C#, try Xamarin. Just note that for the device simuator, Titanium is dependent on a Mac, but Smartface has a simulator app for Windows development and it works better than I expected. On the other hand, Xamarin requires a Mac in your network.
If you want to create iPhone apps but no Mac, then you should try http://www.pmbaty.com/iosbuildenv/
It allows you to easily develop native iOS apps, like with XCode, deployable on any iPhone, iPod or iPad (jailbroken or not).
Use your favourite IDE to code in Objective-C, C++, C or ARM assembly, like in XCode. ARC and blocks are supported.
Compile your iPhone apps directly inside Visual Studio
It works on Windows all versions (XP, 7, 8), FreeBSD and Linux
Now with iOS8 support.
Check out this:
Over view
It is a project that attempts to be able to cross-compile programs written in a variety of source languages to a variety of target languages. One of the initial test cases was to write programs in Java and run them on an iPhone. Watching the video on the site is worthwhile.
With that said, I haven't tried it. The project seems quite beta, and there isn't a lot of activity on their SourceForge site.
You can use Intel XDK with that you can develop and publish app for iOS without mac.
Click here for detail.
Interesting that no one has mentioned the cross-platform wxWidgets option.
It's less than an optimal solution, though.
IMHO, the business-wisest way to go is to invest the money in Apple's endorsed framework. That way, if you find yourself stuck with some mind-boggling problem, you have a much larger community of developers to consult with.
YOU CAN DEVELOP IPHONE APPS ON WINDOWS PC. I've done it, with complex apps. And it works perfectly. You can develop iphone apps without ever seeing a mac or iphone.
You can develop on windows an HTML (or better: HTML5) app, using tools like Sencha or JQTouch, or mobi1. (They used to all be free for a while)
Then you use openSSL to sign the app. And Adobe PhoneGAP Build service to build IPhone App.
But you need the iphone developer licence to install it on an iphone. But you don't need a mac or iphone at any minute to compile, build or test it - all that is done ON THE PC.
I've done it, and it works perfectly. (But with Android type responsiveness - not as fast as a native IPhone app)
You could also use a program from the the Babylonian era (circa 300 bc) running C and C++ called dragonfly. If your app has one or two screens with limited interactivity, and many calculations, go for it. It includes an emulator. You compile to the iphone at the press of a button. (Not sure, but I think you do need a developers license in any case)
And then there is Xamarin. You develop in C# with special calls to native code. You'll have to learn the environment.
Oracle VirtualBox allows users to install Mac OS X in a virtual machine. If you are comfortable with it, you could just use that way to use Xcode. This is legal if you "dual boot" your mac into windows, then install the VirtualBox within windows (or linux).
Other possibilities are cross-compilers such as Appcelerator Titanium (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) or MonoTouch (.NET).
You can use Sentenza for make applications for iPhone, on Windows.
Tested with success.
It's not a solution but a good alternative !
Two other options
Titanium Developer - free community edition - write in HTML/JavaScript - compile with Xcode (requires a Mac or VM)
OpenPlus ELIPS Studio - write in Flex, compile on Xcode (requires a Mac or VM) - they just started charging for their product however.
I think there may be 'toolchain' options for these and some of the others mentioned, which allow you to compile to binary on Windows, and I have seen that you can upload a zip file and have a toolchain style compile done for you online, but this goes against the Apple licensing.
If I am not mistaken, a product such as Titanium that outputs/works with Xcode and does not use any 3rd party / alternative / restricted libraries should be in compliance, because you are ultimately compiling in xcode - normal Objective-C code and libraries.
As has been pointed you can attempt to use the WinChain but if you are a newbie coder it won't be easy.
The iPhone SDK will work on Hackintoshes (a normal PC with OS X installed on it). I know as I have one and it does.
So after you go buy an OSX license you could TRY to install it on your PC on a different drive using Boot-132 or one of the other installers like iDeneb. The issue you will have to do a lot of tinkering and things still won't work quite right.
Using Xamarin now we can develop iPhone applications in Windows machine itself with the help of Xamarin Live Player.
Using this Xamarin live player dev/deploy/debug cycle can now be done without an Apple system.
But to sign and release the app Apple system is required.
Find the reference here
I checked the reference nothing dodgy
Yes and you don't need to learn Objective-C and buying Apple software and hardware.
Adobe have created compilator from ActionScript 3 to program for iOS. And later Apple approved this method of application creation.
This is best way to create Apple applications under Windows or Linux/BSD (and another one for MacOS-X)
If you want to develop an application on Windows environment then there is an option, you can install MAC OS in your windows Platform name is : "Niresh'MAC OS" , you can search that text on Google
then you can download the whole MAC OS Source and easily installed MAC OS in your Windows PC, Niresh is able to Hack the whole OS.
Hope this will help you.
You can install OSX on PC but experience wont be great and it needs lot of work. Alternate is to use a framework/SDK Codename one: which is based on JAVA and can be used to code in WP8, Android, iOS on Windows (eclipse) with all extensive features
Features Overview:
Full Android environment with super fast android simulator
An iPhone/iPad simulator with easy to take iPhone apps to large screen iPad in minutes.
Full support for standard java debugging, profiling for apps on any platform.
Easy themeing / styling – Only a click away
More at Develop Android, iOS iPhone, WP8 apps using Java
Disclaimer: This is my review for the product
Develop iOS Apps on Windows With Cross-Platform Tools
Cross-platform tools are awesome: you code your app once, and export it to iOS and Android. That could potentially cut your app development time and cost in half. Several cross-platform tools allow you to develop iOS apps on a Windows PC, or allow you to compile the app if there’s a Mac in your local network.
Well, not so fast…
The cross-platform tool ecosystem is very large. On the one side you have complete Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Xamarin, that allow you to build cross-platform apps with C#.
The middle ground is covered by tools like PhoneGap, Cordova, Ionic and Appcelerator, that let you build native apps with HTML5 components. The far end includes smaller platforms like React Native that allow you to write native apps with a JavaScript wrapper.
The one thing that stands out for all cross-platform tools is this: they’re not beginner friendly! It’s much easier to get access to a Mac, learn Swift, and build a simple app, than it is to get started with Xamarin.
Most of the cross-platform tools require you to have a basic understanding of programming, compilation options, and the iOS and Android ecosystems. That’s something you don’t really have as a beginner developer!
Having said that, let’s look at a couple of options:
If you’re familiar with Windows-based development tools and IDEs, and if you already know how to code, it’s worthwhile to check out Xamarin. With Xamarin you code apps in C#, for multiple platforms, using the Mono and MonoTouch frameworks.
If you’re familiar with web-based development, check out PhoneGap or Ionic. You’ll feel right at home with HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript. Don’t forget: a native app works different than a website…
If you’re familiar with JavaScript, or if you’d rather learn to code JavaScript than Swift, check out React Native. With React Native you can code native apps for iOS and Android using a “wrapper”.
Always deliberately choose for cross-platform tools because it’s a smart option, not because you think a native platform language is bad. The fact that one option isn’t right, doesn’t immediately make another option smarter!
If you don’t want to join the proprietary closed Apple universe, don’t forget that many cross-platform tools are operated by equally evil companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe and Amazon.
An often heard argument against cross-platform tools is that they offer limited access to and support for smartphone hardware, and are less “snappy” than their native counterparts. Keep in mind that any cross-platform tool will require you to write platform-specific code at one point, especially if you want to code custom features.
If you have ssh access to a Mac, then you can use a VNC (like Vine VNC, which allows multiple uses at once - thin thin client) to control XCode.
This could be useful if you wanted to access a Mac Mini from a laptop, or your S.O. is hogging your MacBook.
You may try to develop web apps for iPhone using HTML, JavaScript, CSS. Check the getting started info at Apple's site.