Click here to Skip to main content
15,868,349 members
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
0.00/5 (No votes)
See more:
Is there any way to create a native app and deploy it to my personal iPhone without owning a Mac?

I want to create a simple app which stores my passwords in an encrypted file so I can remember them. I want to be able to open the file only with my software so I decrypt the main pwd and then see my other passwords. I'm assuming I cannot write a javascript/HTML5 app and then convert using a service like cordova and so I'll need a native app which can get to the crypto API -- whatever that is on an iPhone.

So, is there any service or tool I can use to build a native iOS app without access to a Mac?
Posted
Comments
Kuthuparakkal 16-Feb-15 11:40am    
Have you looked at : http://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/ios-development
newton.saber 16-Feb-15 14:51pm    
I have not seen that. I know there is a free trial, but then if it all works I would want to purchase it but the cost is quite high for RAD Studio:
NEW USER $4,866.00
For that cost, I'd probably rather just buy a mac and develop natively.

Thanks for your input though.
Rou1997 30-Nov-16 20:18pm    
Yes, there is many VPS OS X services, I tried them, this is original OS X, you can install Xcode and write and build for OS X and iOS.
It is paid, but quite cheap to use if you need Apple PC rarely.

Alternatively, you can install Hackintosh or OS X into virtual machine, or Hackintosh onto your physical IBM-compatible machine.
It is free, but requires powerful hardware, and it will not be an original Apple system.

1 solution

Quite a bunch of options, some include that you have got a Mac (which is the free version; unless you've given all of the money to Apple for buying the products), and you install the Xcode IDE and do it all.

Secondly, you can use other third-party frameworks, to build iOS applications without using Mac for installing the IDE. Such as, now you can use Xamarin[^] to write applications in C# and then compile them into native apps for cross-platforms (including iOS). But that also requires you to have a license before you can even compile the application.

Leave that, come to another stage. Visual Studio 2015[^] comes with a lot of features and support for the cross-platform programming in C++, and you can compile the source code into different platforms all from your Visual Studio IDE. This it enables you to use the same source code, and then compile and create different packages of the same application.

Don't like C++? Come to another next stage, there is another framework known as Apache Cordova[^], it enables you to write the applications in HTML5, CSS3 and then control the program's actual logic using the JavaScript (or its libraries; jQuery etc). You can similarly compile and build the packages from the same source code. Enough of these package, aren't they?

One thing you need to consider is that Mac is required for debugging the iOS apps. There is no way you can use any emulator of iOS to test apps. Visual Studio 2015 comes shipped with Android emulator, Windows Phone emulator, but it needs that you connect to a Mac before you can actual test the applications. That is why, my last point is that if you're going to create applications you're (one way or another) going to require a Mac.
 
Share this answer
 

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)



CodeProject, 20 Bay Street, 11th Floor Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5J 2N8 +1 (416) 849-8900