Reputation: 1121

Can I develop iPhone applications using C#.NET on Vista?

I’m interested in developing an iPhone application using Visual Studio and C#.NET on Windows Vista.

I tried to download the SDK from http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action, but the file has a .dmg extension and I don’t know how to open that file.

So can I as .NET developer work and develop against iPhone APIs? And are there any existing applications which haven been developed using .NET? Are there any resources or web sites can help in that matter?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 21

Answers (12)

Jonas Stawski

Reputation: 6752

UPDATE 7/18/2013:

Since this answer is 3 years old I would like to update it with current information. MonoTouch is no more because it is now part of Xamarin. With it you can develop mobile applications using C# and parts of the .NET Framework (using Mono). You can develop iOS apps using Windows and Visual Studio, but you still need a Mac to compile and build. Here's a blog post on how to use VS for iOS development.

ORIGINAL ANSWER

MonoTouch. You still need a mac and a minimum of $400 (as of this writing)

You can try the eval version which doesn't require you to pay and allows you program using the simulator. If you want to test your app on the hardware then you need to pocket the money.

Upvotes: 10

tomfanning

Reputation: 9660

Current answer to this question is yes, with MonoTouch from Novell using MonoDevelop on a Mac computer, but bear in mind that Novell laid off the Mono/MonoTouch guys, who are right now in the middle of setting up a startup to replace MonoTouch with a new product called Xamarin, due for release this summer.

January 2013

Xamarin came through with MonoTouch and Mono for Android quite a while ago now, both of which are great products, if somewhat expensive for the enthusiast.

Upvotes: 3

Daniel Bardi

Reputation: 450

MonoTouch runs on Mac.. For windows you can look at DragonFireSDK. Currently for game development, it allows developing iPhone applications in Visual Studio 2010 using C++ .Net.

http://www.dragonfiresdk.com

Upvotes: 1

Dan

Reputation: 31

yes. monotouch works fine

Upvotes: 3

wayne

Reputation: 11

or you could just run mac os on your pc http://oreilly.com/windows/archive/PearPC.html check it out

Upvotes: 1

Steven Robbins

Reputation: 26599

In a word, no. There is Mono support for the iPhone, but it's currently limited. They have spoken in the past about the possibility of writing a Silverlight app, with a series of "iPhone style" controls that could be statically linked as an iPhone app, but that's some way off.

If it's games you're interested in, and you have deep pockets, then UNITY is a Mono based game development platform that supports the iPhone (and runs on Windows)

Failing that, bite the bullet and get a cheap Mac from EBay. Officially only Intel Macs are supported for the SDK, but you can get it to install on PPC ones and I've yet to have a problem with that (I'm running it on a G5 PowerMac at the moment)

Upvotes: 24

euphoria83

Reputation: 15136

No, you cannot.

The .dmg extension stands for "disk image" and is used for installation files in Mac OS X. Windows Vista won't understand the format and hence you cannot open it.

Also, you won't get the libraries/SDK needed for developing iPhone apps in a .NET framework. You will have to download the latest version of iPhone SDK which comes with an iPhone emulator for testing on the development machine. The main framework used for iPhone development is the UIKit.

The best place to start learning about iPhone development is here.

Upvotes: 2

Paul Dixon

Reputation: 4257

It is possible to develop for the iPhone in C# using Unity. It performs ahead of time compilation as described here. However, Unity seems more aimed at developing games and the iPhone SDK currently requires Mac OSX.

Upvotes: 2

David Webb

Reputation: 193696

The answer appears to be: only for Jailbroken iPhones.

Upvotes: 2

Andy White

Reputation: 88345

The iPhone does not support .NET. I don't believe there are any compatibility hacks or anything like that to run .NET apps on an iPhone, so you might have to bite the bullet and learn Objective-C.

I would do a google search for "iPhone development tutorials." There will probably be a bit of a learning curve.

Upvotes: 1