Developing on windows?

Sort of, but you still need a Mac to publish even if you manage that. You can get a new Mac mini for $600 that will be plenty good enough, and you can get cheaper used machines if you look around (make sure they are capable of running the latest dev environment though).

--Eric

 

Get a Mac. You won't look back.
Seriously, there's not reason not to switch.

 

Have heard of a couple of people who are developing using virtualisation on Windows, but from what they've said, it's really not that stable.

All our devs have either Mac Minis or Macbook Pros.

 

It's possible, but to release it you must use a mac, I believe. However, it's not optimized for Windows, and all the books you'll find will be talking about it in context of a mac.

 

I do a lot of my development on PC (probably about 75%) - I use a cross platform library to allow me to run the game transparently of the device its operating upon (it'll actually work on iPhone, Mac and Windows at present - could do more if I created project files for other platforms).

I'd recommend this approach if you're most familiar with developing under windows and not making a hugely graphically intensive game, the additional platforms which the game runs under often help 'shake' out obscure bugs and suchlike.

Add to this that the PC/Mac builds are FAR faster than the iPhone one which for some products increases the scope of iterative testing hugely.

 

Was specifically referring to people developing for iPhone on a PC, virtualising Snow Leopard and the Apple SDK. If you're developing cross-platform, then of course you'd need to use Windows for some other platforms SDKs (which we also do).

It seems that virtualising Windows on a Mac works better than the other way around, from what I've been told.

I do the game submissions via iTunes Connect rather than the developers and use a Mac for that.

 

I use the PC for them majority of my development. I only use the Mac for implementing device specific features like UIKit components, doing builds for the devices and submissions, and doing the final ZIP to submit the product.

The mac we use is a laptop, but we don't run virtualization. The main reasons I stick with the PC right now is that MS Dev Studio, for me, is a better environment and allows me to set up better conditions against memory leaks, etc. I also have a setup on my PC with a pimp 30" monitor and I also personally think the text editors are better on the PC.

Bear in mind, I'm more used to a PC so that is a good reason! If you want to do it, I recommend just using a PC (non-virtualized) when developing and switch to a Mac. I use source control to sync the code and haven't had any issues.

At the end of the day however, you will still need a Mac to do the builds.

 

As it has been said, you can develop your games in other platforms, but you always have to take the final steps with MAC OS. Not sure if the SDK will work correctly under a virtualized one.

In our studio we all work with Linux and just compile the final builds and submit using a MAC mini (which is the most affordable one).

 

I used VM image for dev... But nothing stands close to the real Mac.
I bought Mac and dev became 10 times faster then before.

And I love Xcode IDE, it's the best IDE I ever worked with, no studios or eclipses can match it. It's just fluent work and nothing else.

 

Check your pc hardware for compatibility with osx86. If compatible you can setup a dual boot. There is plenty of tutorials outthere

 

depends if you want the legal version of the mac OS

 

AFAIK you can't install an original mac OS on a PC, so I think you have to use a hacked version even if you want to buy an original one.

 

You can use DragonFireSDK to create apps in Windows. There is no need for a mac and you can still send your apps to the App Store. All you need to know is the C/C++ code to use the program. People using this program have already published apps in the store so it does work. You can see some of the apps made on their site:

http://www.dragonfiresdk.com

 

There's a rumor about Windows having an iPhone publishing capability that will be premiered at the WWDC

 

Well it costs $99/yr to have the privilege of selling your app on the apple app store, you have to be willing to invest something...