Obtaining Xcode

[B D Littlewood]

I've just got a "not new" Mac Mini with Snow Leopard. I'm completely new to Macs and all associated software. Reason to change to Mac from PC is that I have an old VBasic programme that needs converting for sale on the App Store for use on iPads and iPhones. From my new Objective-C book I see that I need Xccode, SDK and possibly other stuff. I need these just for the one programme: I'm not a software developer, only have this one prgramme that I want to make into an app. Tried to download the latest version of Xcode from the App Store but was told my OS wasn't suitable. They say that I need Mountain Lion to get Xcode 4 as a registered developer. But having owned the Mac Mini for just a couple of days I don't want the hassle of upgrading the OS if it's not really necessary. I'm wondering if, for this fairly 'basic' programme, I need to have the latest version of Xcode. Would an earlier version do the job? And is there such a thing available? And, if so, which would that be? It's not just that I don't want to go to the trouble and expense of upgrading to Mountain Lion, but not having experienced any of this before buying my new Mac Mini, i've ended up with a machine that's been upgraded to OS 10.6.8 and has only 2GB of RAM and I've seen suggestions that the hardware isn't suitable. I'd welcome any advice on what I should, or can, do next.

All the best,

Brian

[Benni-chan]

you can find older xcode versions on https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action

but you should use the latest xcode to get all features from the ios sdk. (not sure, if apple accepts new apps created with old sdk)

[Sayer]

Find an iOS contractor and see if they can give you some ideas on how to proceed.

A lot of iOS Developers do work for other companies and their own stuff to be put into the App store.

If this is some vertical-market very specific app you may want to get some professional help to get it started, at least, as VBasic is vastly different from iOS Programming for an iPhone/iPad.