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 Delphi XE4 and the macincloud service. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.
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
Here's the answer I had been looking for:
Have your application delegate subclass UIApplication. In the implementation file, override the sendEvent: method like so:
- (void)sendEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
[super sendEvent:event];
// Only want to reset the timer on a Began touch or an Ended touch, to reduce the number of timer resets.
NSSet *allTouches = [event allTouches];
if ([allTouches count] > 0) {
// allTouches count only ever seems to be 1, so anyObject works here.
UITouchPhase phase = ((UITouch *)[allTouches anyObject]).phase;
if (phase == UITouchPhaseBegan || phase == UITouchPhaseEnded)
[self resetIdleTimer];
}
}
- (void)resetIdleTimer {
if (idleTimer) {
[idleTimer invalidate];
[idleTimer release];
}
idleTimer = [[NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:maxIdleTime target:self selector:@selector(idleTimerExceeded) userInfo:nil repeats:NO] retain];
}
- (void)idleTimerExceeded {
NSLog(@"idle time exceeded");
}
where maxIdleTime and idleTimer are instance variables.
In order for this to work, you also need to modify your main.m to tell UIApplicationMain to use your delegate class (in this example, AppDelegate) as the principal class:
int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, @"AppDelegate", @"AppDelegate");
Best Answer
Here's my solution in a nutshell:
In recent years, when needing to produce moving visual content from the interface of an iOS app, I would require the developer provide a compiling of the app designed for the Simulator, (must be separately compiled because the apps are, by default compiled to run on the iPhone's ARM processor, whereas the Simulator runs on the Mac's Intel processor). This would then be screen captured on the Mac with something like Snapz Pro, Screenflow or something similar.
Beyond that, typical solutions required jailbreaking the device and installing a screen capture application sourced from the Cydia Store.
With the introduction of the iPad 2, Apple enabled full interface mirrored video output via either an authorized dock connector to HDMI dongle, or a dock connector to VGA dongle. (Note: Apple's composite and component options do not port mirrored content.) While the typical intent for these output mechanisms are to display the interface content to an external projector or High Definition Television, it is possible to record this mirrored content with a device capable of recording or transcoding content from such an incoming source. This option was also made possible with the introduction of the iPhone 4S. Quite often, recording this video content is done with HDMI capture cards installed on the capturing computer, such as those produced by Black Magic or AJA, among others. This is, or course limited to using computers that are capable of having such a capture card installed. Other options may include some HDMI record-enabled DVR devices (though many detect and disable such options) or firewire-based transcoding devices (like the Grass Valley ADVC-HD50, which I use).
Since getting the iPad 2 earlier this year, I have been using the Grass Valley ADVC HD50 to capture iOS screen motion from dock connected HDMI to a HDV compatible video capture application on my Mac. It has thus far worked flawlessly.
Here is an example from a video I recorded showing such captured content from both the iPHone 4S and the iPad 2.
http://youtu.be/k7jlPx8NAmw
However, now that Apple has enabled wireless iOS mirroring via Airplay in iOS 5, I find it is now much more convenient to connect an Apple TV device to the Grass Vally ADVC HD50, and capture the iOS interface screen recording wirelessly.
Here is a recent short video example in which the iPhone 4S interface was captured wirelessly via Airplay mirroring.
http://youtu.be/UKsixjcCXdI
I hope this helps.