Iphone development

If I were you, and assuming you have some sort of computer, I'd begin learning to program on that in C or C++ or javascript, or anything really - the knowledge will translate well when you eventually get a Mac and begin Objective C programming. You can also write detailed design documents for one or two games you plan on creating when you begin iPhone development. You should've easily saved up a few hundred dollars to buy a Mac mini in the mean time.

 

a little advice: DO NOT BUY A CAR! cars are, in fact, the worst investment that you can possibly get into, with very low resell value, high maintenance costs and very little actual time savings. You would be better off putting your money into a mac right off so that you can actually start seeing a return on your investment at some point in your life, which, unless you are buying a collector's car, is never going to happen with a car.

just my 2cents.

Also, it doesn't take TOO much money to start up iphone dev, so it shouldnt take too long. good luck!

 

I'll add 2 cents to Amelia's sound advice. The great news for you is that iPhone developers don't need cars, only caffeine and electricity (and, of course, a Mac laptop which you can pick up cheap - I've got one I'll sell you for less than the price of 6 months of your auto liability insurance). So, find a futon near a coffee shop with wifi and start programming.

 

I would agree with the others.. pass on the car.

If you are serious about coding a game for the iPhone the best thing to do would be to buy a MacMini. You can pick one up for under $600, and they work great.

Rather than screw with a Hackintosh or something else and be somewhat skirting the bounds of "illegal" (assuming you don't buy the OS) to develop your games, you would be better off making sure everything is legit.

Perhaps invest in a few books to go along with the Mini and you have a decent little dev environment.

Who knows if you make enough money you might be able to buy yourself a car afterwords, as opposed to if you buy the car first, I don't see how it'll help you buy a Mac to develop on the iPhone/iTouch.

Just my 2 cents.

 

MacMini for under $600, eh? Now that I like to hear. I am in a similar situation. I'm 21, and want to dev, however, I have experience(from HTML-PHP to Visual Basic, Java, and C). I don't however, have a mac, and upon realizing the sdk is mac os only, pretty much putthe dream on hold. But $600 i could save up slowly. (I have a family to support and work just above minimum wage). Hopefully with a decent tax return I can knock out half the saving.

 

Get a cheap used car, or none at all. I was in a similar situation to you, and I ended up buying a used macbook on Craigslist for $650(CAD), which is perfect for iPhone development.

I looked into all the options for developing on Windows, and even had a hackintoshed dell mini 9, but in the end, the macbook was definitely the way to go. You can't go wrong with a Mac Mini either.

 

We got a macbook on ebay for $650 or so, and it's been doing just fine for us. there are possibilities of getting cheaper macs, for sure.

 

Basically all you need is VMWare, a licenced copy of MacOS and a windows pc. Here a thread by my other "me": http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=15916

Thats how I develop my games. Beside of that I own two Mac Minis, but its so much more fun developing with a fast windows pc and Visual Studio.

 

The cheapest path is the Mac Mini as others have said (probably around ~550 new). Realistically, you also want an iPod Touch at some point (199) and a developer license (99). Technically, all you need is the Mac (you can use the included simulator to test your app), but some games can't be tested (easily) with the simulator -- for instance, if your app requires multitouch.

 

To be honest (and I don't want to sound negative) I wouldn't buy any of those things mentioned on this thread yet if I were you.

You've said, that you've never coded before, how do you know that you even going to like it? Last thing you want is to spend all of your money and find out that this thing is not for you.

I assume you already have PC, perhaps with Windows OS, so why don't you grab a free copy of C# Express Edition from Microsoft and play a little? If you really keen you can even get a free XNA game studio as well and try making something very simple as pong clone first?

If after all this you'll fall in love with coding, then by all means, buy Mac mini, iPhone etc. and sky is the limit.

P.S. I talk like this from my own experience with my teenage son - he wanted to be a programmer oh so many times

 

ok, if you already tried programming than you probably know what it takes.

One really cool game tool for iPhone is Unity game engine, but it ain't cheap.

If you want to develop just with Obj C and Open GL, learning curve is very steep I'm afraid.

 

Cars are not an investment. They are an expense. One always needs to weigh the less tangible returns (time saved, mobility added, etc.) against the cost to see if it makes sense.

Sometimes those intangibles are hard for most people to understand. e.g. If he's good at sports, he could have difficulty making it to practice and games without a car. For want of sports, he could miss out on a sports scholarship to college. It really is a personal decision in that respect.

As for the time savings, that depends on where you live. Suburban bus services here in the Chicagoland area, for example, can add over an hour to each direction of your trip. For important needs (e.g. getting to and from work), the time savings are significant.

More rural areas is another example. Towns are often separated by 10 miles or more with events, jobs, and other reasons to travel often spread across a 20-30 mile radius with no public transportation system. The mobility added by a vehicle is simply unparalleled by other options.
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Hilux Surf

 

I also agree with what eJay said; there are so many young guys who come on here each week asking how to start iPhone development, and most of them never get past stage one and then their attention moves toward the next new shiny thing.

You need to be realistic. Investment in a Mac is what's needed for iPhone development, but that won't make your games successful. I would even go out on a limb and guess that most posters in this thread haven't made enough sales to pay back their initial investment of a Mac. But that doesn't mean success isn't possible, it's just very difficult and you certainly shouldn't put all your money into it. If you need the car for any reason, and you aren't just getting it as a luxury, buy the car. You can always start learning programming in the mean time, using your PC to start building little games.

Read this thread for answers on how to start learning programming before you buy a Mac. I even posted a tutorial on creating a platform game that will run on iPhones/iPod touches through Safari. You can also make puzzles games for Safari as well. And you can always post the links to the games here for people to play on their iPhone and give you feedback. And if you decide it's not for you, then you haven't had to sacrifice the car.

 

Objective-C is it's own animal. I found the move to C# from C/C++ much easier than the move to ObjC. Even Java seems to be more related to C++ than ObjC is to anything.

If you have a PC and a 360, I recommend you learn C# and develop an XNA game. You can make money at it and enough to pay for a iPhone dev "kit". What you learn in C# can be applied to Objective-C. The potential payout for XNA is lower but the risk is lower as well.

Also, if you make money with XNA you could always buy Unity for the iPhone and just keep deving in C# as well without ever having to really make the move to Objective-C.

If it were my choice to make I'd get a car waaaaay before I tried investing in a iPhone dev kit.