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Is it possible by any means to have a game developed for iPhone using the iPhone sdk on Windows?

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    \$\begingroup\$ In short: Yes, but be careful that it's really worth the trouble. If you work on a platform that's even moderately unstable a cause de not being a Mac, that can easily cost you the time equal to what it would take you to earn the price of a Mac Mini. \$\endgroup\$
    – Williham Totland
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 20:16

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Though it is against Apple's policy, you can install OS X into a virtual machine and develop an app that way. And if you can manage it, you technically can write the code and such on a Windows machine; it is, of course, only text. But the compiler, SDK, etc. is completely OS X-only.

You can also look into other ways to make iPhone games, such as the Unity engine, or Flash (I know at one point they compiled to iPhone games, I think they have since discontinued that)

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    \$\begingroup\$ Flash has re-released their iPhone packager, although my experience with it (using it command-line, not through CS5) was a frustrating one. \$\endgroup\$
    – Gregory Avery-Weir
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 15:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ Oh! ok, have checked the packager for iphone at adobe website. The update is available since October 11, as Apple lifted the third party developer restirctions. This means its recent activity. No need for a specific Mac system then. Flash will do work for me,isn't it? \$\endgroup\$
    – GamDroid
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 15:45
  • \$\begingroup\$ If you downvote, please explain why you downvoted... \$\endgroup\$
    – Ricket
    Commented Nov 12, 2010 at 2:49
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See this question on stackoverflow.com.

Even if there's some way to do it with virtual machines, jailbroken phones and so on, I can't believe the hassle would be worth it. The time you spend dealing with all the issues is time that you won't have to improve the game.

If you're using a cross-platform development environment like Unity, you'll be able to do most of the development on Windows, but you'll still need a Mac in order to deploy to the phone for testing or release. (And testing on the device is vital: a finger on a touch screen is not like a mouse pointer on a window.)

It's not as if you need a powerful machine to develop an iPhone game: a Mac Mini for $699 will do just fine.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Actually I was up and running with OSX in a virtual machine on my laptop in a short afternoon. No issues, I just found development to be something too difficult for my workload at the time. lifehacker.com/5583650/run-mac-os-x-in-virtualbox-on-windows - I would've had serious buyer's remorse if I had spent $699 for that. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ricket
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 14:00
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I'd recommend looking into Mono. It allows you to write .NET apps on your iPhone/iPad.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ MonoTouch only runs on Macs. Or so it says. \$\endgroup\$
    – PrettyPrincessKitty FS
    Commented Nov 11, 2010 at 18:57
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I was looking for a solution to develop apps on Windows. In the end I bought a Mac mini and I am glad I did. The Mac and the develop tools are working just fine. The time I saved figuring out configuring Windows/Virtual machines/OSX and so on I spent on actually developing Apps.

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Airplay SDK claims to allow you to develop in Visual Studio on a Windows PC. I have not tried it out, so no idea how well it works.

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The Adobe AIR SDK 3.3 allow you to build iOS app on windows platform: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/developer-relese-notes-11_3.html

However, you have to code your app/game in ActionScript but you can extends the AIR SDK functionality through Adobe Native Extension (ANE).

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Marmalade is a good engine which can easily be integrated with Visual Studio. So you can develop for iOS, Android, Bada, WebOS, Windows etc. from single code. You would need a Mac to upload the ipa file though, but i guess it'll be easier since you only need it once. I am using it so I can tell you it works good and now with version 6.0 you can also develop in HTML5 using phonegap API.

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You can use a computer simulator like VirtualBox and just upload the mac's source code files and download XCode of the app store.

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