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Is there any way to tinker with the iPhone SDK on a Windows machine? Are there plans for an iPhone SDK version for Windows?
The only other way I can think of doing this is to run a Mac VM image on a VMWare server running on Windows, although I'm not too sure how legal this is.
It's certainly possible to develop on a Windows machine, in fact, my first application was exclusively developed on the old Dell Precision I had at the time :)
There are three routes;
Install OSx86 (aka iATKOS / Kalyway) on a second partition/disk and dual boot.
Run Mac OS X Server under VMWare (Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, read the update below).
Use a framework and/or toolset, which allows developing on Windows, like Delphi XE4 with the mac-in-cloud service, which can build without MacOS device need. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.
Other honorable mentions are Flutter, Xamarin and similar; which may at end need actual MacOS device for final build (but you can test on Android till then, as they're cross-platform).
The first route requires modifying (or using a pre-modified) image of Leopard that can be installed on a regular PC. This is not as hard as you would think, although your success/effort ratio will depend upon how closely the hardware in your PC matches that in Mac hardware - e.g. if you're running a Core 2 Duo on an Intel Motherboard, with an NVidia graphics card you are laughing. If you're running an AMD machine or something without SSE3 it gets a little more involved.
If you purchase (or already own) a version of Leopard then this is a gray area since the Leopard EULA states you may only run it on an "Apple Labeled" machine. As many point out if you stick an Apple sticker on your PC you're probably covered.
The second option is more costly. The EULA for the workstation version of Leopard prevents it from being run under emulation and as a result, there's no support in VMWare for this. Leopard server, however, CAN be run under emulation and can be used for desktop purposes. Leopard server and VMWare are expensive, however.
If you're interested in option 1) I would suggest starting at Insanelymac and reading the OSx86 sections.
I do think you should consider whether the time you will invest is going to be worth the money you will save though. It was for me because I enjoy tinkering with this type of stuff and I started during the early iPhone betas, months before their App Store became available.
Alternatively, you could pick up a low-spec Mac Mini from eBay. You don't need much horsepower to run the SDK and you can always sell it on later if you decide to stop development or buy a better Mac.
Update: You cannot create a Mac OS X Client virtual machine for OS X 10.6 and earlier. Apple does not allow these Client OSes to be virtualized. With Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, Apple has changed its licensing agreement in regards to virtualization. Source: VMWare KnowledgeBase
Xamarin is a solid choice. It was purchased by Microsoft and is now built directly into Visual Studio. You code in C#. With all the updates and features they are adding, you can do everything but submit to the App Store from Windows, even compile, build and deploy to an iOS device.
For games, Unity 3D is a great option. The editor is free to use for development, and even for distribution (if you have less than 100K USD in annual revenue). Unity supports iOS, Android and most other platforms. It may be possible to use Unity's "Cloud Build" feature to avoid having to use a Mac for deployment, although by default Unity actually spits out an Xcode project when building for iOS.
Other options:
PhoneGap (html/javascript) also works. It isn't quite as nice for gaming, but it's pretty decent for regular GUI applications.
Flutter (dart) is a free cross platform mobile app development framework from Google. Write your code in Dart.
React Native (javascript) is another popular cross-platform framework created by Facebook.
Note that: for all of these options, all or most of the development can be done on Windows, but a MacOS device is still required to build a binary for submission to the App Store. One option is to get a cheap MAC Mini to do your final build.
If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can install the iphone-gcc toolchain onto the iPhone through Cydia and that way you can just compilie the apps on the iPhone. Apps that are developed this way can still be submitted to the App Store.
And although Mr Valdez said it is a grey area (which it is), jailbreaking is incredibly easy and pretty much risk free. Yes, it voids your warrenty but you can just do a restore and they will never know.
Most of "so called Windows solutions for iOS development without Mac" require Mac at the end just to sign and send to app store. I checked a few, not all though (who has the time?)
At the end it's just too much trouble to learn "their super special easy way to program iOS without Objective-C", they have lots of bugs. Really the goal they are setting is unachievable in my view.
Also a lot of time they make you use Objective-C equivalent statements simply in another language. They kind of look the same but there are always subtle differences that you have to learn on top of obj-c. Which also makes even less sense, because now instead of learning less you have to learn more. So where is the gain?
Also they cost a lot, because they are very hard to develop.
Many lack any debugging abilities whatsoever.
In my honest opinion, if you are a hard-core iOS developer then for sure buy the best Mac and learn objective-c. It's expensive and takes time, but if it's your path, it's worth it.
For an occasional use, it's just easier to rent a remote Mac service, like XCodeClub.com
The SDK is only available on OS X, forcing you to use a mac. If you don't want to purchase a mac you can either run OS X on a virtual machine on your windows box, or you can install OS X on your PC.
In my experience the virtual machine solution is unusably slow (on a core2 duo laptop with 2G ram). If you feel like trying it search for the torrent. It's probably not worthwhile.
The other option is to install OS X on your PC, commonly referred to as a hackintosh. Hackintoshes work quite well - my friend just sold his mac because his Dell quad core hackintosh was actually much faster than the apple hardware (and cost about 1/3).
Of course both of these options are likely counter to some licensing scheme, so proceed at your own risk.
You can use WinChain
Quoting the project page:
It's the easiest way to build the iPhone toolchain on a Windows XP/Vista computer, which in turn, can take Objective-C source code that you write using their UIKit Headers (included with winChain) and compile it into an application that you can use on your iPhone.
You don't need to own a Mac nor do you need to learn Objective-C. You can develop in different environments and compile into Objective-C later on.
developing for the iphone and ipad by runing osx 10.6(snow leopard)
This article one of our developers wrote gives a pretty comprehensive walk through on installing OS X Snow Leopard on Windows using iBoot, then installing Vmware (with instructions), then getting your iPhone dev environment going... and a few extra juicy things. Super helpful for me.
Hope that helps. It uses Phonegap so you can develop on multiple smart phone platforms at once.
You can use Tersus (free, open source).
A devkit that allows one to develop iPhone apps in Objective-C, C++ or just plain C with Visual Studio:
Check it out at iOS build env
You can build iPhone apps directly within Visual Studio (2008, 2010, Express).
Pretty neat, it even builds IPA files for your app after a successful compilation. The code works as is on jailbroken devices, for the rest of the planet I believe the final compilation & submission to the App Store has to be done on a Mac. But still, it enables you to develop using a well-known IDE.
Of course, you can write Objective-C code in notepad or other programs and then move it to a Mac to compile.
But seriously, it depends on whether you are developing official applications to put in App Store or developing applications for jailbroken iPhone. To write official applications, Apple iPhone SDK which requires an Intel Mac seems to be the only practical way. However, there is an unofficial toolchain to write applications for jailbroken iPhones. You can run it on Linux and Windows (using Cygwin).
Try macincloud.com It allows you to rent a mac and access it through RDP remote control. You can then use your PC to access a mac and then develop your apps.
You will soon be able to use Adobe Flash CS 5 to create Apps for the iPhone on Windows:
flashcs 5
flashcs5 apps for iphone
Hooray! You can now more easily accomplish this with the latest Xamarin.iOS, using a network-linked mac providing the build and deployment capabilities.
See here for more details:
introduction to xamarin ios for visual studio
If you want it to be legitimate, you have two options, cloud based Mac solutions or cross-platform development tools.
You may consider the hackintosh approach or virtual machines if you don't care about legal stuff. If you have a decent PC, running a virtual machine would be the easiest way to go. You may never know which hardware will have driver issues on a hackintosh.
I've tried all these approaches and they all have pros and cons, but for the second group, I feel kind of guilty. I develop apps to make a living and I wouldn't want to rip off someone else for it.
If you are making a small project, cloud based Macs may prove useful. Rent it for a short time, develop your project and off you go. Don't bother learning anything new.
However, if your project is getting big, cross-platform frameworks seem to be the only alternative. The critical thing is that you need to choose wisely. There are so many hybrid frameworks, but what they do can be summarized in one sentence as "diplaying web pages in an app wrapper" and developers' negative experience with hybrid frameworks also affects native frameworks.
I tried three of these (Titanium, Smartface and Xamarin) and they all claim to produce "real native output" and in my opinion their claims are correct. You need to test and see it yoursrlf, it's not easy to describe the native feeling. In a previous comment, it was indicated that it takes some effort to learn these platforms, but once you get to know them, you can develop not just iOS applications but Android applications as well, all with the common code base. And of course, they are much cheaper than a cloud Mac. Some of them are even free. You would need a Mac only for store submission.
If you know JavaScript, try Titanium and Smartface and if you know C#, try Xamarin. Just note that for the device simuator, Titanium is dependent on a Mac, but Smartface has a simulator app for Windows development and it works better than I expected. On the other hand, Xamarin requires a Mac in your network.
If you want to create iPhone apps but no Mac, then you should try http://www.pmbaty.com/iosbuildenv/
It allows you to easily develop native iOS apps, like with XCode, deployable on any iPhone, iPod or iPad (jailbroken or not).
Use your favourite IDE to code in Objective-C, C++, C or ARM assembly, like in XCode. ARC and blocks are supported.
Compile your iPhone apps directly inside Visual Studio
It works on Windows all versions (XP, 7, 8), FreeBSD and Linux
Now with iOS8 support.
Check out this:
Over view
It is a project that attempts to be able to cross-compile programs written in a variety of source languages to a variety of target languages. One of the initial test cases was to write programs in Java and run them on an iPhone. Watching the video on the site is worthwhile.
With that said, I haven't tried it. The project seems quite beta, and there isn't a lot of activity on their SourceForge site.
You can use Intel XDK with that you can develop and publish app for iOS without mac.
Click here for detail.
Interesting that no one has mentioned the cross-platform wxWidgets option.
It's less than an optimal solution, though.
IMHO, the business-wisest way to go is to invest the money in Apple's endorsed framework. That way, if you find yourself stuck with some mind-boggling problem, you have a much larger community of developers to consult with.
YOU CAN DEVELOP IPHONE APPS ON WINDOWS PC. I've done it, with complex apps. And it works perfectly. You can develop iphone apps without ever seeing a mac or iphone.
You can develop on windows an HTML (or better: HTML5) app, using tools like Sencha or JQTouch, or mobi1. (They used to all be free for a while)
Then you use openSSL to sign the app. And Adobe PhoneGAP Build service to build IPhone App.
But you need the iphone developer licence to install it on an iphone. But you don't need a mac or iphone at any minute to compile, build or test it - all that is done ON THE PC.
I've done it, and it works perfectly. (But with Android type responsiveness - not as fast as a native IPhone app)
You could also use a program from the the Babylonian era (circa 300 bc) running C and C++ called dragonfly. If your app has one or two screens with limited interactivity, and many calculations, go for it. It includes an emulator. You compile to the iphone at the press of a button. (Not sure, but I think you do need a developers license in any case)
And then there is Xamarin. You develop in C# with special calls to native code. You'll have to learn the environment.
Oracle VirtualBox allows users to install Mac OS X in a virtual machine. If you are comfortable with it, you could just use that way to use Xcode. This is legal if you "dual boot" your mac into windows, then install the VirtualBox within windows (or linux).
Other possibilities are cross-compilers such as Appcelerator Titanium (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) or MonoTouch (.NET).
You can use Sentenza for make applications for iPhone, on Windows.
Tested with success.
It's not a solution but a good alternative !
Two other options
Titanium Developer - free community edition - write in HTML/JavaScript - compile with Xcode (requires a Mac or VM)
OpenPlus ELIPS Studio - write in Flex, compile on Xcode (requires a Mac or VM) - they just started charging for their product however.
I think there may be 'toolchain' options for these and some of the others mentioned, which allow you to compile to binary on Windows, and I have seen that you can upload a zip file and have a toolchain style compile done for you online, but this goes against the Apple licensing.
If I am not mistaken, a product such as Titanium that outputs/works with Xcode and does not use any 3rd party / alternative / restricted libraries should be in compliance, because you are ultimately compiling in xcode - normal Objective-C code and libraries.
As has been pointed you can attempt to use the WinChain but if you are a newbie coder it won't be easy.
The iPhone SDK will work on Hackintoshes (a normal PC with OS X installed on it). I know as I have one and it does.
So after you go buy an OSX license you could TRY to install it on your PC on a different drive using Boot-132 or one of the other installers like iDeneb. The issue you will have to do a lot of tinkering and things still won't work quite right.
Using Xamarin now we can develop iPhone applications in Windows machine itself with the help of Xamarin Live Player.
Using this Xamarin live player dev/deploy/debug cycle can now be done without an Apple system.
But to sign and release the app Apple system is required.
Find the reference here
I checked the reference nothing dodgy
Yes and you don't need to learn Objective-C and buying Apple software and hardware.
Adobe have created compilator from ActionScript 3 to program for iOS. And later Apple approved this method of application creation.
This is best way to create Apple applications under Windows or Linux/BSD (and another one for MacOS-X)
If you want to develop an application on Windows environment then there is an option, you can install MAC OS in your windows Platform name is : "Niresh'MAC OS" , you can search that text on Google
then you can download the whole MAC OS Source and easily installed MAC OS in your Windows PC, Niresh is able to Hack the whole OS.
Hope this will help you.
You can install OSX on PC but experience wont be great and it needs lot of work. Alternate is to use a framework/SDK Codename one: which is based on JAVA and can be used to code in WP8, Android, iOS on Windows (eclipse) with all extensive features
Features Overview:
Full Android environment with super fast android simulator
An iPhone/iPad simulator with easy to take iPhone apps to large screen iPad in minutes.
Full support for standard java debugging, profiling for apps on any platform.
Easy themeing / styling – Only a click away
More at Develop Android, iOS iPhone, WP8 apps using Java
Disclaimer: This is my review for the product
Develop iOS Apps on Windows With Cross-Platform Tools
Cross-platform tools are awesome: you code your app once, and export it to iOS and Android. That could potentially cut your app development time and cost in half. Several cross-platform tools allow you to develop iOS apps on a Windows PC, or allow you to compile the app if there’s a Mac in your local network.
Well, not so fast…
The cross-platform tool ecosystem is very large. On the one side you have complete Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Xamarin, that allow you to build cross-platform apps with C#.
The middle ground is covered by tools like PhoneGap, Cordova, Ionic and Appcelerator, that let you build native apps with HTML5 components. The far end includes smaller platforms like React Native that allow you to write native apps with a JavaScript wrapper.
The one thing that stands out for all cross-platform tools is this: they’re not beginner friendly! It’s much easier to get access to a Mac, learn Swift, and build a simple app, than it is to get started with Xamarin.
Most of the cross-platform tools require you to have a basic understanding of programming, compilation options, and the iOS and Android ecosystems. That’s something you don’t really have as a beginner developer!
Having said that, let’s look at a couple of options:
If you’re familiar with Windows-based development tools and IDEs, and if you already know how to code, it’s worthwhile to check out Xamarin. With Xamarin you code apps in C#, for multiple platforms, using the Mono and MonoTouch frameworks.
If you’re familiar with web-based development, check out PhoneGap or Ionic. You’ll feel right at home with HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript. Don’t forget: a native app works different than a website…
If you’re familiar with JavaScript, or if you’d rather learn to code JavaScript than Swift, check out React Native. With React Native you can code native apps for iOS and Android using a “wrapper”.
Always deliberately choose for cross-platform tools because it’s a smart option, not because you think a native platform language is bad. The fact that one option isn’t right, doesn’t immediately make another option smarter!
If you don’t want to join the proprietary closed Apple universe, don’t forget that many cross-platform tools are operated by equally evil companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe and Amazon.
An often heard argument against cross-platform tools is that they offer limited access to and support for smartphone hardware, and are less “snappy” than their native counterparts. Keep in mind that any cross-platform tool will require you to write platform-specific code at one point, especially if you want to code custom features.
If you have ssh access to a Mac, then you can use a VNC (like Vine VNC, which allows multiple uses at once - thin thin client) to control XCode.
This could be useful if you wanted to access a Mac Mini from a laptop, or your S.O. is hogging your MacBook.
You may try to develop web apps for iPhone using HTML, JavaScript, CSS. Check the getting started info at Apple's site.
I'm a Windows (native, not .NET) programmer and I'd like to port an application to the Mac.
Actually, I believe it will be more of a rewrite, as the original depends on many activex controls.
As I have never used a Mac in my entire life, I'll need some guidance. O:-)
a) What book(s) would you recommend to make the move from Win32 to Mac OS?
b) Is there anything similar to Delphi (RAD) for the Mac?
c) Can anyone recommend (or not) Lispworks (www.lispworks.com)?
d) Is there anything similar to the Windows market of 3rd party COM components (so I don't have to write everything)?
e) Anything else I should be aware of the Mac market?
f) Oh, BTW, what Mac should I buy? O:-) (must be a laptop)
Thanks in advance
I've taught Cocoa programming to several Windows-experienced programmers. You may find a previous post on the subject useful.
Cocoa is a very different way of thinking then MFC and its kin. You will do much, much better if you take the time to learn how Cocoa approaches things and adapt to its mindset rather than trying to find the quickest way to implement your current way of thinking in ObjC. It is possible to write MFC-style code for Mac, but you will always be fighting the framework if you do. I've seen a lot of Windows developers struggle with this.
The best book to learn Cocoa is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. Assuming you are a C++ developer with a solid OOP background, this is the book to start with. If you have limited Object Oriented background, then start with Programming Objective-C 2.0.
You would be amazed how fast Objective-C can be to code once you understand the patterns. It really can be stunning compared to C++ in my experience. There are more RAD-like systems like REALbasic, and you can develop Cocoa apps in Ruby now which can be a bit quicker. But there really is no substitute in the Mac market for ObjC. It's hard to make an app that works like a Mac app without using the Mac frameworks, and Mac users tend to be much fussier about such things than Windows users.
I have no background in LispWorks, but LISP seems a terrible language for developing the kind of rich UIs that Mac apps are known for. I like LISP (quite a lot actually), but Functional Programming's "no side effects" philosophy seems at odds with most rich UI goals (especially as the Mac UI becomes more and more animation-centric). If anything, Mac programming is moving towards Declarative rather than Functional programming (Core Animation and Grand Central Dispatch have a lot of Declarative concepts creeping in).
There is not as large a third-party component market as there is for Windows. Some of this is because Cocoa already provides such a rich set of components, which MFC does not, and because well-behaved Mac apps are expected to use those components so that you work like all other Mac apps. There is definitely little market for commercial components in the vein of RadControls for .NET (very nice toolkit, that one). But there are quite a few nice free components out there with flexible licenses (generally MIT-based). A few of my favorites:
Positive Spin Media's excellent tabbar control
OmniGroup's frameworks (though I never use them "as is;" they're better used as examples of how to do things)
Growl
Sparkle
RegexKit
CocoaDev's ObjectLibrary list of other stuff
As I mentioned before, Mac users are picky about their UI. Much, much more so than Windows users. They expect things to be polished, and they expect things to integrate with all the little things that make Macs nice. That means drag-and-drop, Spotlight, services, Applescript, Expose, QuickLook, integrated spelling check, etc. etc. It's very hard to do all these things right if you don't use the built-in frameworks. That's why I recommend new Mac developers start at the beginning and learn the frameworks.
For a Mac, if you have a bunch of hardware lying around (like keyboards and monitors), then a Mac Mini is a nice cheap box. iMacs are great if you want an all-in-one, and any MacBook is appropriate if you like portability. There is no Mac on the market today that is not a perfectly fine development box. Obviously if you do a lot of work, an 8-core Mac Pro makes compiling much faster, but I've done a lot of professional development on a 13" MacBook. If you want to get in as cheaply as possible, look for refurbished or used (I love my refurbished Mac Mini). Any Intel-based Mac is going to be fine for development, at least while you're getting started.
If you are familiar with C, you may want to learn Objective C since that is the Macs "native" programming language. It's also what you have to use to write iPhone applications. Cocoa is Apple's primary API that will have a lot of the tools you are looking for.
a) Read this thread for book recommendations: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7571/cocoa-and-objective-c-resources
b) Apple makes Xcode for developing in. There are certainly better ones out there, but it's not bad.
d) Cocoa is Apple's main API, which provides "core" services like CFNetwork for networking. There is also core data, core audio, core animation, core image, core location,... Underneath it all, OSX is Unix, so you have access to many unix/linux libs.
e) The iPhone is a big part of the Mac market. The iPhone and OSX development environments are not that different, so you can learn both.
f) Any Mac is sufficient for most development. If you want a laptop, it's really a question of screen size and price. But I would recommend at least a 15 inch screen. You don't need to spend extra for a faster CPU, but you may want to get a larger hard drive.
If you've done your native Windows programming in C and/or C++, you may have an easier time migrating your application to C#/.Net, and then running it in Mac using Mono. At least some of the available third-party .Net components will run on Mono (see http://www.mono-project.com/Third_Party_Controls_Status).
I have no idea what Mac you should buy - I recommend getting one of the pretty ones.
a) ...
b) You could use Python coupled with wxPython and be cross platform. Python is included by default with Mac OS X.
c) ...
d) I'm sure there is, but I can't tell you more. If you use Python, you get tons of third party libraries for free.
e) They don't take kindly alien GUI guidelines:
Word 6.0, launched in 1993, is widely considered to be the worst version of Word ever for the Mac, as it was based on the same codebase as Word 6.0 for Windows. That meant that it looked and worked more like Windows software than a Macintosh program. Mac users were so up in arms that Microsoft actually released a Word 5.1 downgrade to unhappy Word 6.0 owners.
f) Mostly any iMac will be good enough for programming. Choose the one that you like the most and has lots of RAM.
e) Its a small market.
f) An iMac. Edit: since it says laptop - Macbook Pro 13 is a great deal.
Well, simple situation. I happen to be a software engineer who uses mostly Delphi and C# for software development. Delphi is great for desktop applications while C# is ideal combined with ASP.NET for web applications. However, I am considering to teach myself more about software development for the Mac. Xcode and Cocoa would be the environments to start with. Learning new languages is no problem for me!
However, before starting to write code on a Mac, I first need to buy one and they're reasonable expensive so buying one is a decision that will take me a few months before I know which one I need. So, to help me right now, I would like to know the possibilities that I have to learn more about Mac development without the need for a Mac!
For example, does OS X work in a VMWare environment? Are the development tools also available for Windows? Is there a clear API overview of the OS X libraries?
Or should I first buy a Mac, play with it for a few weeks and then decide on how to develop software for it? In other words, should I start spending now, or in a few months? :-)
Perhaps a macmini would be the best bet but failing that:
MacOSX in VMWare: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Vmware_how_to
Development tools for windows? I'd stick to XCode as it can compile multi-binary apps.
Here's the clearest overview I can think of: http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/MacOSX/index.html
Hope this helps!
Mac OS X works in a VMWare...
Unfortunately XCode works only on Mac OS...
There are versions of Max OS, which runs on x86 machines. You can avoid buying a Mac PC, but you have to pay for the OS and XCode...
EDIT: Xcode is free
You definitely want a Mac if you want to develop for the Mac. Even Java requires local testing.
That said, Macs are not very expensive and run Windows too.
If you want to learn and start programming before you have a Mac, I recommend either Java or .NET, specifically Delphi Prism.
See here my own first experiment with Delphi prism:
http://leaukiprog.blogspot.com/2009/07/delphi-prism-first-experiment.html
You can write a program for Windows, keep GUI code and other code separate and later replace the Winforms GUI with a native Cocoa GUI on the Mac.
I found that Pascal is a good language for accessing native APIs from .NET. Everything looks cleaner than with C#, I think.
The new version of Delphi Prism is coming out on the 25th, as far as I know.
You might also look into the GNUstep project. This will let you experience objective-c a little bit before you make the plunge, albeit with the GNU libs instead of cocoa.
Good Mac (or iPhone) software is an artisan product; it reflects the culture and tastes of Mac (or iPhone) users. Because the Mac is a premium platform, users tend to be more sensitive to the feel and polish of the apps. Thus to successfully program for the Mac/iPhone or even grok the Cocoa frameworks properly, you have to grok the Mac user experience. Although many coming from the Windows or other-UNIX world try to skip this step, they do so at their own peril.
So, as a Mac developer (who also writes for other UNIX OSes), my recommendation is buy a Mac and start using it, full time if you can. A Mac Mini is completely adequate for development and will set you back only a few hundered dollars, including the OS. Consider that on Windows, this is often less than the price of a full VS license. Everything else (Xcode, libraries, etc.) are free.
Once you have a Mac and begin to grok the feel of things, you'll discover that there are a number of development options. Besides the Cocoa frameworks--which can be used from Python (via the built-in PyObjC bridge), Ruby (via MacRuby or RubyCocoa)—-there are a number of other options. Qt from Nokia and Mono are viable. Often cross-platform apps written in Qt or Mono are disliked on the Mac because they don't feel "native" (see above), but really the problem is not the framework. If you get the Mac user experience you can write a very passable Mac app in a cross platform framework. You just have to intend to write a Mac app, not get a Windows app working on the Mac.
If you code in RealBasic or Lazarus, you can run and compile your apps for both Mac OS and Windows (and Linux in the case of Lazarus). RealBasic isn't that popular outside of the Mac Platform, and isn't free. Lazarus is still a little rough around the edges, but is basically a free version of Delphi.
Lazarus is working hard on a native COCOA port with the next major version of FPC (though that will probably be available only in 2011)
Macs use Objective C. The APIs are very useful and there are many tutorials online. You'll be using Xcode, the Mac equivalent to Windows' Visual Studio and Linux's Glade.
I love making cross-platform applications. In a few hours I can prototype an application in Mac and publish it online. Then it'll take a day or two to port to Windows.
A Mac looks expensive, but it's not if you look what you get for your money.
It is entierly up to you if you buy one or not. I guarantee you'll have a lot fun with it, next to programming. If you want a cheap Mac, just buy a Mac Mini for 500 dollars, which you can connect to the Display you already own.
I recommend doing this on Mac OS X rather than Windows, but again: it's up to you.
P.S. You can use VMWare, but I think it's slow if you have less then 4 GB RAM.
A Mac really isn't that expensive if you go down the second hand route, I was put off by the price of brand new Macbooks so I got a late 2007 model for £350 and added an extra gig of RAM to it.
Reasonably priced, less hassle for development as well!
If you want to have just a general feeling about ObjC and the object libraries, why not giving a try to GNUStep?
Take a look at it here:
http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Main_Page
In the wikipedia article on Cocoa it says:
There are also open source implementations of major parts of the Cocoa framework that allows cross-platform (including Microsoft Windows) Cocoa application development, such as GNUstep, Cappuccino, and Cocotron.
Yet when I looked into whether Mac application Tweetie was available for windows the developer had ruled it out:
Windows doesn't have Cocoa, the programming environment that Tweetie is made in, as such, it seems like a poor possibility.
I'd like to have an answer to point the Tweetie developers (and as a resource for other cocoa developers) which would tell them:
Which implementation is the most suitable for getting a cocoa app running on windows?
How much work is it likely to take to get the app running under windows?
How easy/hard is it to maintain a common code base for Mac and Windows?
(any other considerations I've missed?)
Of course if it would be too much work I'd like to know that too before suggesting it and potentially sending someone else on a fruitless search.
Don't forget:
“Major parts of the Cocoa frameworks” is not the same as “the entirety of the Cocoa frameworks”. Tweetie could be using something that's missing.
Tweetie could be (very probably is) using APIs from the non-Cocoa frameworks, such as Core Foundation, Core Services, Core Graphics, and Core Animation. A port of the Cocoa frameworks alone won't include any of these APIs, and even a more complete Mac-API-emulation framework will not include all of them.
These frameworks are eternally chasing Apple. Even if they catch up, they'll be instantly behind again as of the next Mac OS X release. Mac developers already put off using new APIs in new Mac OS X releases while they wait for users to upgrade to those new releases; now you're asking atebits to also wait for the other-framework developer to catch up to Apple again.
Any second implementation of an existing API will have bugs that the first implementation doesn't, and vice versa. These differences will cause development and support problems.
You're asking atebits to add a third platform to an application that already exists on two. Supporting one platform is a lot of work. Supporting two platforms is a hell of a lot of work. Supporting three? Now you're getting into big-company territory.
So, even with these Cocoa-like frameworks, the answer is: Hard.
Among GNUstep, Cappuccino and Cocotron, Cocotron is only possible choice to port a Mac application to windows.
Cappuccino is for web and GNUstep only runs on top of cygwin or mingw, which means the GUI looks nothing like native windows apps.
It is theoretically possible to build cocoa windows apps using Cocotron. However, the reality is that it is still very hard to use, and it is still quite limited in the Cocoa API.
Therefore, two possible solutions:
Try hard to remove the codes that are not supported by Cocotron in the original code base and do the cross compilation. Maintaining common code base will be painful.
Start a new GUI at all, no common code base. two choices here
Start a cross platform project with cross application framework such as Qt, or Java.
Start a windows only project. There are a lot of choices here, .Net WinForm application, MFC, etc.
There are Windows compilers for Objective-C (the programming language used to write cocoa apps). However, Cocoa includes the frameworks for presenting the GUI. These visual frameworks are specific to Mac OS X because they use OS X only windows and other controls. So someone would need to re-implement the controls in Cocoa to use Windows controls.
Also, I am fairly certain that Tweetie uses Mac OS X only technologies like Core Animation. This does not exist on Windows, so the nice animation effects present in the apps would have to be implemented in a completely different way.