OS X (Apple)

hi,

i want to start developing an ios app that can be used on iphone and ipad. can anyone guide me how to start? i saw that it can be developed only on a mac system.. but i dont have a mac system. i have an ipad 4 and a laptop with windows os? can i use one of these to start developing ios app??

thanks

If you can figure out the binary object file format for iOS apps and you can write a program to cross compile software that you write and link it into that object file format that will run on your Windows system, then you can write iOS apps on Windows. After you have done that, you could create an iOS app to run on your iPad or iPhone to edit, compile, and link software written on your iPad or iPhone to build apps to run on your iPad or iPhone.

If you want any help from Apple to make any of this easy for you, I doubt that they'll oblige. I assume Apple wants to sell Macs for iOS app development. And, I assume that Apple doesn't want to have to worry about the changes that happen in every Windows release that would make it a pain for them to develop, sell, and maintain a tool that runs on Windows that would provide a cross compilation environment for iOS apps as a product. Or, more likely, Apple hasn't been shown that doing so would be profitable.

Using the above method *might work* but you won't have access to many Cocoa tools; "Foundation" might somewhat work since it's based in OpenStep specification, but AppKit and CoreData will most likely fail.

You'll also be missing Interface Builder which is an XCode-only tool. Of course you can always create your xib's by hand (a lot of people actually do that -- RubyMotion folks for instance) but it requires deep understanding of the language.

You won't be able to use iOS simulator and neither a real device since those have to contain a signed certificate that Apple provides to you when you enroll in their Developer Program.

GCC has support for Objective-C but not Cocoa APIs (although it claims it has equivalent classes).

Lastly, you won't have access to one of the most useful tools Cocoa offers: ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) so you'll have to either manually deal with memory management (C style) or use the classic (and deprecated) garbage collector.

Best case is to get virtualbox.org and install a cracked copy of OSX from some of the tutorials out there (at your own risk) and then download the xDeveloper application from the AppStore that is included with OSX. Should work.

I've read about it also being possible to install OSX onto a Windows partition but that probably involves a bit of hacking.

Yes you can with RAD Studio XE6 by Embarcadero in either Delphi or C++. It can create natives apps for ios andriod, mac os and windows