Can I code iPhone apps using Eclipse?

Question

As you can probably guess, my knowledge of coding is very limited. Nonetheless, I do know a little Java. I have Eclipse and was wondering if I could use it to code for iOS iPhone/iPad applications. I know that I would almost certainly have to use a language other than Java, but I'm clueless as to what packages or plugins I would need to install in Eclipse to use it to code for iOS. If you guys could answer this question in extreme detail or link me to a very good sequence of video tutorials, I would be extremely grateful.

Answer 1

The short answer is, "not natively."

Apple pretty much restricts "native" iOS development to XCode which, as @Bob said in his answer, is only available for OS X. So that means no Eclipse or Java-based development. However, there are several cross-platform development frameworks and tools that work to varying degrees of quality. Here are a few, in no particular order:

• PhoneGap
• Appcelerator
• Corona
• Adobe AIR (see answer by @dogsgod)

There are others, but those are ones that I've at least heard of and might have tried a little bit. Some, like Appcelerator, have IDEs built on Eclipse, so at least the dev environment would be familiar.

Answer 2

Yes you can!

If you can live with coding ActionScript, which should be easy to learn with a Java background, you can use Eclipse & AIR to code for iOS (and Android at the same time)

Some resources:
http://flex.apache.org/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashruntimes/
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/
http://flashdaily.net/

Be aware that many apps in the store have been build on this platform, and the community is pretty alive and supportive.

Answer 3

IOS apps are written in Objective-C or Swift using XCode. (This also means you'll need a Mac to do so. XCode is only available for OSX.)

So unfortunately this means the answer to your question is no. You cannot use Eclipse to write an iOS app.