Develop iPhone app without a Mac? [duplicate]

Question

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

I'm looking to build an iPhone app for my wife's phone, but am not interested in buying a Mac as a development platform for a one-off piece of work. The app:

• should run standalone on the iPhone (i.e. without network connectivity)
• would be perfectly acceptable with a GUI created using one of the iPhone Javascript libraries that are around
• will do some database IO to read and update data
• has no commercial value and will never be used by anyone else

Here's my thinking:

• jailbreak the iPhone
• install Ruby + Sinatra on the iPhone
• write the app using Sinatra, hitting a database (SQLite?) on the iPhone

To access the app on the iPhone:

• start the Sinatra app in the background (is this possible?)
• start a Safari browser session
• navigate to the Sinatra app at e.g. http://localhost:12345
• etc.

This seems like a strange approach, but I can't think of a simpler way of writing a standalone iPhone app without buying a Mac. Is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

What you have described is a viable solution, however you should consider using the open toolchain for the iphone.

You don't need a mac then, only need to jailbreak the phone to make sure your app will work.

For all those who say it can't be done, this was the only way to make Apps for the iphone before the SDK was out :)

Also if you are after a guide to using the open toolchain then I highly recomend this book

Answer 2

The only reliable info I could find is at the always-excellent MetaFilter

http://ask.metafilter.com/110466/Anyway-to-develop-iPhoneiTouch-apps-without-investing-in-a-Mac

The answer is apparently no.

You absolutely need an Intel Mac of some description.

The entire iPhone build process is too deeply ingrained in XCode to build elsewhere; and the only other Objective-C compiler I know is gcc, which doesn't support any Apple's additions to the language (nor their libraries).

And, in direct opposition to what people are saying above, Objective-C is absolutely my favorite native, compiled language. Elegant, small (only a few changes from C), late-binding, dynamic, straightforward. It's what C++ should have been.

Lots of people recommend picking up a secondhand Intel (remember, must be Intel!) Mac Mini as the cheapest "port of entry".