   A Few Quick iPhone Development Questions
  Hi all.  So I know there's people on these forums who have played around with iPhone development.  I get that we need a Mac (or Hackintosh) to develop, which is fine.  What I'm actually curious about is the iPhone side of things.  Clearly, you need an iPhone to test your apps on the real thing.  However, I currently have a cell phone already and want to keep my existing service (at least until my contract expires).  Carrying an additional cell phone with service doesn't really make sense since this would just be for hobby, most likely.So, here's what I'm curious about, and please excuse the potential niavete of these questions:A) What's the minimum expense way to deploy apps to the iPhone?  Do you need cell phone service or do they perhaps have data-only service?B) If you get a "hacked" iPhone, is this a suitable test environment for testing iPhone apps?C) Can you run J2ME apps on the iPhone or is it Objective C only?D) Without owning an iPhone with an active subscription, can you still provide your app to the iPhone app store as long as you pay the $99 subscription fee? (I assume yes)   
  I shall try to answer to your queries.Quote:A) What's the minimum expense way to deploy apps to the iPhone? Do you need cell phone service or do they perhaps have data-only service?You  don't  need a iPhone at all to deply your application at app store. But developers like to have one because there are performance difference between simulator and a real device. Every one wants to look at how it actually look on the device.Quote:B) If you get a "hacked" iPhone, is this a suitable test environment for testing iPhone apps?Yes you can certainly do that. You can always use a jail broken iPhone for it. THERE IS NO NEED FOR ACTIVE SUBSCRIPTIONQuote:C) Can you run J2ME apps on the iPhone or is it Objective C only?Language supported is Objective C, Objective C++, but you can always use C and C++.Quote:D) Without owning an iPhone with an active subscription, can you still provide your app to the iPhone app store as long as you pay the $99 subscription fee? (I assume yes)First part of it is already answered. But you have to buy a $99 account to deploy application for a small organization.;Quote:You  don't  need a iPhone at all to deply your application at app store. But developers like to have one because there are performance difference between simulator and a real device. Every one wants to look at how it actually look on the device.There are also performance (and cost) differences between an iPod Touch and an iPhone. Depending on what features of the iPhone you use, you can use an iPod to test if you do not feel the emulator is good enough. I know a couple of top ranking applications were developed using an iPod Touch.   ;Quote:A) What's the minimum expense way to deploy apps to the iPhone? Do you need cell phone service or do they perhaps have data-only service?get yourself an ipod touch 8gb, the hardware is exactly the same (aside from lacking a camera, and obviously, 3g).Quote:B) If you get a "hacked" iPhone, is this a suitable test environment for testing iPhone apps?no. for obvious reasons. get an ipod touch and use thatQuote:C) Can you run J2ME apps on the iPhone or is it Objective C only?im not sure if there are java bindings (def not J2ME) for the iphone. you can use objc/objc++/c/c++ although system calls are objective-c. you can happily mix and match objective-c++ and c++ though.Quote:D) Without owning an iPhone with an active subscription, can you still provide your app to the iPhone app store as long as you pay the $99 subscription fee? (I assume yes)yes, but you can do that with an ipod touch too. no need to actually own the iphone itself.;  Awesome, thanks for the tips.  I actually hadn't realized that the iPod touch and iPhone have the same hardware, so it never occurred to me that that was an option.I appreciate the info.  Thanks!   ;Quote:Original post by Matt_DQuote:A) What's the minimum expense way to deploy apps to the iPhone? Do you need cell phone service or do they perhaps have data-only service?get yourself an ipod touch 8gb, the hardware is exactly the same (aside from lacking a camera, and obviously, 3g).It's also missing a GPS.   ;  My dev hardware includes a UniBody MacBook, the 2Ghz stock option, and an iPod Touch. Software wise, its OSX and XCode, along with the iPhone SDK 2.0.You do need access to a Mac to run the software (or I suppose a Hackintosh would work.) I got a MacBook because I needed a lappy anyhow, and I dual-boot Windows XP. If portability is not a concern, the newer-model Mini is the cheapest option, its got the same guts as the MacBooks -- including the nVidia 9400M GPU -- try to avoid the integrated intel stuff, its good enough for iPhone development and basic stuff, but if you're going to spend the money you may as well get the significantly better option. Aside from that, once the next series of iPhones/iTouches go to an OpenGL ES 2.0 device, the intel stuff may not be programmable enough to offer accurate emulation at acceptable speeds. If you want portability for a little less cash, they even upgraded the white MacBooks to the 9400M, although its a little slower due to different RAM.If you don't have access to a Mac, you're looking at a little less than $1000 bucks to go from nill to getting a product on the appstore, minimum. $599 Mac Mini, $219 iTouch 8GB, $99 Developer Liscense. You can get your app up and running with just the Mini initially, and then shell out the rest once you need real hardware to test performance.Also, another difference between the iPhone and iTouch is that the iTouch runs just a bit faster... something like 20-50 Mhz. Speculation is that they decreased the clock-speed of the iPhone to compensate for the extra power the cellular radio requires. Also, the iTouch runs fewer background processes, resulting in slightly lower memory use -- this is in addition to lacking phone features and GPS, as others have mentioned.Even if you don't use iPhone-only features you should still test performance on an actual iPhone, especially if you're just scraping by on an iTouch.   ;Quote:Original post by shurcoolQuote:Original post by Matt_DQuote:A) What's the minimum expense way to deploy apps to the iPhone? Do you need cell phone service or do they perhaps have data-only service?get yourself an ipod touch 8gb, the hardware is exactly the same (aside from lacking a camera, and obviously, 3g).It's also missing a GPS.it has assisted GPS using skyhook (when you have a wifi connection) otherwise it will report you at 1 cupertino way ;):)   ;  I would second what Ravyne said. I found out the hard way that the iPod Touch is  your ideal environment so you should test on an iPhone. There are more processes running in the background so if it runs well on the iPhone it will run well on the iPod, but not necessarily the other way around.   