iOS New iphone programmer Qs

[xArtx]

Hi Guys, First post!

I've had an iphone 4 for a year, and always wanted to get
into programming for it with the main restriction being that
I don't own a Mac to run the Apple supported dev environment

I've experimented with the native toolchain running on the phone itself with no success.

A few questions..
What is the minimal Mac specs needed to comfortably run Xcode and whatever else may be needed for iphone programming?

Do the compiled programs run on jailbroken iphones also?

Is programming possible in plain old C, rather than Apple's objective C?

Do you need to pay any licensing if you only want to run programs on your own iphone?

Any help appreciated
Art.

 

[jnoxx]

Wow, alot of questions which could be easily answered by reading the stickies on top of this forum.

But i'll break it down to you.
You need an INTEL based Mac which can run OSX Lion quite smoothly, if you also want to support iPad Retina, otherwise, if it's your for your own iPhone.
Try to find an older Mac Mini for cheap on craigslist, or whatever websites you guys use (we don't use that here).
Make sure it's an INTEL based processor, you will need Xcode.
You need a license to run apps on an iPhone, which costs 80 euro per year, or 99$ per year, if you have a jailbroken phone, there are ways to make IPA's and just install them without signing them, but I have never tried that since I have the license..

You can program in C, C++ or Objective C, whatever fit your needs, as long as you can make it compile and run There are plenty tutorials on that.

 

[xArtx]

Nice
There are some Qs I can & have looked up,
but it's the unofficial answers I'm mostly after.

Ideally, I want my software to run on a jailbroken phone
until I became familiar with the platform enough to worry
about writing any potential app store available stuff.

I am not opposed to paying my dues unless it actually prevents me from running code on a jailbroken iphone.
I did some popular stuff in Sony PSP development early days,
and am sure if I'd gotten in on this earlier, there would have
been great potential to reach a lot of people.
It was plain old C, so that's good to hear, thx for the reply

 

[mfram]

But to clarify, the Cocoa Touch Framework used in iOS is all written in Objective-C. So all of the library bindings are in Objective-C. You have to use at least some Objective-C in your project handling the UI. The backend logic you can use what you want, but you will definitely need to get up to speed on Objective-C. There's no reasonable way to avoid it.

 

[xArtx]

I'm typing this on my new Mac mini
And Xcode 4 is downloading.
I read that you should begin with Xcode 3 to be consistent with existing tutorials.
This is my first Mac & I didn't find an option in the App store to download version3 of Xcode.

 

[dejo]

I read that you should begin with Xcode 3 to be consistent with existing tutorials.

Depends what the existing tutorials are based on. Xcode 4 has been out long enough you should be able to find enough tutorials for it.

 

[amorya]

I'm typing this on my new Mac mini
And Xcode 4 is downloading.
I read that you should begin with Xcode 3 to be consistent with existing tutorials.
This is my first Mac & I didn't find an option in the App store to download version3 of Xcode.

There should be a lot of tutorials out for Xcode 4 by now — it's been out a while. Also, Xcode 3 isn't supported for running on Lion —*you can make it work, but by default it won't install.

I would suggest you learn with Xcode 4.

 

[xArtx]

Hmm, tried to reply, but it didn't work...

I have the StreetScroller (Apple sample code) working on my iPhone hardware
the official route.. installed provisioning profile and have run some samples on it.

I can't figure out why the background for the StreetScroller app is dark blue,
or how the background rectangle is drawn.
Any ideas there?