Can I develop iPhone applications using C#.NET on Vista?

Question

I’m interested in developing an iPhone application using Visual Studio and C#.NET on Windows Vista.

I tried to download the SDK from http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action, but the file has a .dmg extension and I don’t know how to open that file.

So can I as .NET developer work and develop against iPhone APIs? And are there any existing applications which haven been developed using .NET? Are there any resources or web sites can help in that matter?

Thanks!

Answer 1

In a word, no. There is Mono support for the iPhone, but it's currently limited. They have spoken in the past about the possibility of writing a Silverlight app, with a series of "iPhone style" controls that could be statically linked as an iPhone app, but that's some way off.

If it's games you're interested in, and you have deep pockets, then UNITY is a Mono based game development platform that supports the iPhone (and runs on Windows)

Failing that, bite the bullet and get a cheap Mac from EBay. Officially only Intel Macs are supported for the SDK, but you can get it to install on PPC ones and I've yet to have a problem with that (I'm running it on a G5 PowerMac at the moment)

Answer 2

UPDATE 7/18/2013:

Since this answer is 3 years old I would like to update it with current information. MonoTouch is no more because it is now part of Xamarin. With it you can develop mobile applications using C# and parts of the .NET Framework (using Mono). You can develop iOS apps using Windows and Visual Studio, but you still need a Mac to compile and build. Here's a blog post on how to use VS for iOS development.

ORIGINAL ANSWER

MonoTouch. You still need a mac and a minimum of $400 (as of this writing)

You can try the eval version which doesn't require you to pay and allows you program using the simulator. If you want to test your app on the hardware then you need to pocket the money.