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Sunday, June 07, 2009

Cheap way to develop for iPhone

Peace be upon you

How are you guys? I am sorry for not posting a lot.
Today I am gonna write how to start iPhone development in a very cheap way, first let us talk about why, I thought about that.
In Egypt we have don't have Apple it self, we have punch of people who has the reseller logo, they offer SUCK service, high prices for nothing, they are even not cool in manner of human treatment, it is like "we sell Apple products, we are from heaven (YAKHHHHH)"
anyways, I have noticed that people likes the idea of developing for the iPhone and how it can get quite good money for simple application, this is happen because of the huge number which is use 1 place to shop for software "App store", the only thing that makes people step back is the prices of the Apple machines, in Egypt we pay double prices so there is always something to be done to get out of this CRAP, high price and need of equipment, so I have started messing around the netbooks as a low end machines that can do HELL of things (little monster)

so what do u need to start?
 - MSI Wind U123x
 - Externel DVD reader
 - Mac OS X (10.5.2 (this what I have tried) or higher) -> Kalyway (get it from http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page )
 - Combo Update to (10.5.3)
 - iPhone SDK (get it for free from http://developer.apple.com/iphone )
 - Chain0 (get it from http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Chain0 )

Here is snapshots for what the operation 

Insert the Mac OS X Kalyway DVD and boot

From the customize screen select the proper kernel and VGA driver 
Now after installing the combo update (VERY TRICKY to be installed) and installing the XCode and iPhone SDK everything up and running and 100% running 

Screen shot from the MSI Wind U123x after having a simple trail.

I will post in detail how to make everything running, I have exams this days so pray for me and I hope that I have much time for my BELOVED blog and BELOVED readers, I really miss the nice feeling when I write something

Thanks for your time.
BR
Ahmed Essam

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting post. I have a quick question since your post was very brief on the details: Does your process involve jailbreaking the iPhone?
It would be great if you mentioned also how to get the developed application on "Apple Store".
Thanks in advance, and good luck with your exams :D

Ahmed Essam said...

The idea here is about to get Mac OS X up and running and ready for iPhone development.

For the iPhone development, there is two ways

1 - Apple official SDK
* This way is very Ok, if you want to publish your application on the Apple App Store, there is hell of limitation in the SDK, like you can't do service process, which kills any idea that based on such ideas, like instant messaging or such things.

2 - Open application framework
* This way is very nice if you are going to do "underground" development, because your application will not be published in the Apple App store, you can sell your stuff at "Cydia, Icy, .... etc" in short, any device that is jail-broken, the good thing about it is, you can use the whole power of unix and the private frameworks, at the end you will manage to do anything, like SMS reader, MMS application, bluetooth application, in short "you will be able to do WHATEVER"

What I have done has nothing to do with "iPhone Jail breaking" it is about providing low end iPhone development machine.

isA I will try to provide more details about iPhone development and how things goes as I am now part of process to publish iPhone App

Thanks for your reply
BR
Ahmed Essam

Ahmed Essam said...

I have got this on my mail, I will not mention who sent it to me, the idea is to answer the questions
********************************************************
Thanks Ahmed … Very interesting.

How many hours did it take to have everything up and running?
Any issues that you have faced?
Any limitations that you have noticed?

Regards,
********************************************************

How many hours did it take to have everything up and running?
As it was my first trail and I miss lots of things, it took me about 3 to 4 hours, and I did install Mac OS X 3 times during this time.
but when it starts I really shocked by the performance, it was amazing may be because I don't use anything except the XCode but it was quite impressive, I would develop on it if I don't have a MacBook,

Any issues that you have faced?
Well, I have faced some issue but it was expected, for instance, the network cards didn't work "WiFi or Ethernet" the funny thing is the bluetooth was working :D, the sound see to be working but I couldn't hear anything, the Monitor out didn't work, the screen is little tiny
I have to reinstall Mac OS X because a little mistake I have done while updating the System,
the update operation is so tricky and need to be done very carefully.
I think if the driver is available everything will be Ok, The update operation will be the only headache

Any limitations that you have noticed?
There is no limitation at all, in manner of developing application, the simulator was working Ok, I plugged iPhone and it is working Ok, there is no problems when it comes to the development, the only bad thing is the screen size, it just need to be little larger

Anonymous said...

Ahmed, thanks for the instant reply. I understand that the post has nothing to do with jailbreaking, and I do almost understand the process you've done. However, I just need to make sure of one thing: I have an iPhone, and I can set up the environment as u said, let's say I need to build some app to use on MY iPhone for instance, do I have to jailbreak my iPhone to get it deployed and installed?
Thanks ... :)

Ahmed Essam said...

You will need to have a valid certificate with a valid provisioning profile to run application on your device

the other alternative is to make your app, miss with XCode platform configuration files then make a custom source on Cydia and run your app

so the second path require a Jail Broken device

abdelaziz g. mahfouz said...

good post ahmed, i hope to try it asap :-)

Unknown said...

You will need to have a valid certificate with a valid provisioning profile to run application on your device

Is that provisioning can be affected if i develop iPhone Apps with Kalyway?

Thanks for Reply..

Ahmed Essam said...

Peace be upon you

I think the idea here is that the system is working which means you can register the certificates and profiles with no problems, also u have to consider the nature of you iPhone program, which means it is little bit tricky to setup the environment first time.

There is some ways to escape the code signing and work directly without no problem, but you may not be able to debug using XCode, also u will have to jail break your testing device.