What will I need to start developing for iPhones?

Question

I currently have Delphi 2010 and have just recently got an iPhone (5 days ago) which is my first ever venture into the Mac world. I absolutely love it btw - it has changed my life already.

If this should be posted somewhere else then I apologise and will do what is required to keep this question open, as I really need advice from you guys...

My Question/s

I want to begin developing for the iPhone but I am not sure where to begin and what I would need, ok I know that I would definitely need Delphi XE2! so that is one prerequisite and as mentioned above I already have an iPhone but what else would I need?

Would I actually need a physical Mac machine? and a developers account? I have looked on the Apple site and believe that I can sign up for one for free yet I have also read that it would cost $99 per year.

It would be ideal for someone here that already develops for iPhones to list all the prerequisites that I would need to begin this. I think this will be an expensive foray so I really want to get things right in my mind before I totally commit and invest real hard time and money that could lead me to go more grey ;) I have 3 grey hairs atm and I really want to try and minimise that!

Answer 1

The FireMonkey Development Setup for iOS spells things out pretty well. You obviously need a Mac in order to develop for iOS or OS X; you can compile OS X applications in the XE2 IDE, but you can't run them to test or debug without a Mac.

iOS development requires a Mac, as it requires XCode (which is Mac only); it also requires the Free Pascal compiler and some of the units it provides for iOS. You also require the Apple developer's account you mention (and indeed, it costs $99.00 a year).