What do we need to develop games for iphone, ipad or ipod?

objective-c i believe is what the majoirty of the devs write in. Correct me if im wrong. and Flash games are a no, there has been an ongoing dispute between Adobe and Apple, and frankly apple doesn't want anything adobe flash related anywhere near their products.

 

Whatever you do, you should definitely be focusing on the iPad!

 

Objective-C with the cocos2d engine.

 

I would disagree. The iPod Touch/iPhone market is far more reliable than the iPad market. There is a greater need for mp3 players and phones than there is for a pseudo laptop computer. Not to mention, the number of iPod Touches/iPhones owned far outweigh the number of iPads.

 

I have an iPad though, and I gotta say, the gaming is spectacular but no games have really taken advantage of the iPad's full potential yet.

 

First the debate on which device to focus on could go on forever and i promise there is no answer. Focus on both.
You will need xcode which provides tools to test rather you have devices or not anyways.

While it is true about the language they are coded in the majority of apps are made with some sort of game engine. The basic graphics engine included in the sdk is limited.

Here are some engines that are very common. I have used all four of these so my experience is first hand and not biased.
Now I am sure people will likely have opinions good or bad on all of these but EVERY one of these have very successful and good games in the app store.

Unity - Very robust and supports multiple systems. Some of the hottest titles are made with Unity. It can handle anything from pacman to a fully featured PC mmo.

Torque2d for Iphone (3d coming soon) - Unique in the fact you will spend a lot of time learning its own language for more advance scripting but, it does have some nice drag and drop aspects and you can turn around and release your game on xbox with minor adjustments. In fact the Xbox SDK includes a version of torque (at least it did some time ago)

The next two engines i put in the same category as they use the same phsicics engine (box2d).
Both are fairly simple to dive into but can be provide quite a lot for a more advanced programmer.
Game Salad Probably the easiest to jump into since it has drag and drop for the basics. Very tweak-able though if you dive in beyond the drag and drop.
Cocos2d Smilier to above with no drag and drop options. But that does allow you customize to your likings.

Hope that helps a little
There are more engines out there but I haven't used them so i cant say much about them