Alternatives For iOS Development Under Windows [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I develop for iPhone using a Windows development machine?
iPhone development on Windows

I just got my new iPad and now I have two iOS devices, an iPod and an iPad. So I realized that iOS is a great OS to develop some stuff, but the problem is that I'm under Windows and I don't have any plans to buy a Mac. Anyway what I want isn't the port of the SDK for Windows, so I can develop in Objective-C. But what I want is to know all(maybe) the alternatives that I have to develop for the iPad(that I'm a lot more interested right now) and the other iOS devices.

PS: I'm interested at Application development, not game development

Answer 1

You might find following solutions handy. I have tried to comment those I am more familiar with:

• PhoneGap
• Sencha Touch - Nice JS framework. Check out their demos.
• Rhomobile
• Appcelerator Titanium
• jQuery Mobile - Version of jQuery optimized for mobile devices.
• jQTouch - jQuery plugin for mobile development
• CrossMobs - Sdk for iOS and android development (no mac needed).
• Nomad - Visual Studio extension for cloud PhoneGap builds (no mac needed).
• Delphi XE4 - Delphi XE 4 (no mac needed, you can use macincloud)

Hopefully you'll find an alternative fitting your purposes. It really depends on what you already know. For instance if you are already familiar with Ext JS using Sencha Touch seems like a no-brainer to me.

To get an app to App Store it looks like the only solution (at least AFAIK) is to use PhoneGap for packaging your JS app. You will need XCode (mac) for this. Perhaps it's possible to use a virtualized version of OS X for this as well though I cannot guarantee this will work.

Answer 2

You said you want all the alternatives, so let me add:

I understand you don't have any plan to buy a mac, but change your mind. Buy a cheapest mac.

Come on, you invested already on an iPad and an iPod. Buying a Mac mini shouldn't be so mentally difficult for you.

edit:

@Nathan: why do you hate OS X while you love iOS? As hotpaw2 says, they are basically the same. I believe the kernels are compiled from the same source. Both have a set of basic pseudo-object-oriented C functions for strings and array manipulation, called Core Foundation. The GUI part is done by libraries called AppKit / UIKit, which are basically the same.

In fact, OS X, even in Snow Leopard, has a few remnant of OS 9, while iOS is almost purely derived from NeXTStep. On OS X Gestalt is alive and well (even after deprecation of most of Carbon), but there's no such thing in iOS! So, if you love OS 9, you should like OS X more than iOS.

I know love and hate are not logical, but you're not at all logical here :)