iPhone here I come!

[Zeal]

So thanks to masterfalcon, we now have (from what I can tell) a pretty stable port of ogre running on the iphone. So I guess that means its time for Zeal to join the party! I have been doing a little research, and have decided that a mac mini will be the cheapest way to go, but I wanted to see if any current iphone developers had any tips/suggestions. The model I am looking at is...

http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... le#start=0

Keep in mind the ONLY thing I plan to use this mac for is iphone development. Also note I dont have an actual iphon yet (I hate att), so I will have to do all my testing on the mac itself...

I know some of the earlier 2006-2007 minis would work since they have the required intel processor, but this latest 2009 model seems to have a pretty big advantage in the video card department. Since the new model iphones seem to be trending towards better and better gpus, it seems like investing a little more in the better graphics card might pay off down the road eh? And 1 gig of memory should be plenty right (I hear it IS possible to crack open those minis add more ram later)? Not too worried about disk space, since I cant imagine filling up a 120gig drive with JUST iphone stuff.

Any advice appreciated!

[Juan]

I am thinking the same of you, to buy a mac mini to develop for the iphone. But there are some importants things you may know, you have to pay 100 € / year to be acepted into the partner program, if you upload any aplication, it would be tested by apple, and i don´t now if it permit to use others ide than his iphone sdk, and have to pass very strict controls. I imagine that apple doesn´t wan´t aplications programed with other ides because is a very close corporation, they don´t wnat anything "different of it"
About the hardware, yes, you can upgrade it, the ram is like other ram´s laptbooks, the hard drive is a 1.8" or 2.5", so you can buy it. The graphic card is in the motherbord, so no upgrates are avaible.
You should do like I, make a hackinstoch, use the iphone sdk, learn the special c of apple and develop anything to see how it is. Later, if you like/want to continue, you should buy the mini.
Dont worry about the iphone, if you don´t have it nothing happens, into the ide there are a very good emulator of it, so you dont need one to create a program for it.

[Zeal]

You should do like I, make a hackinstoch,

What is a hackinstoch? *I assume you mean a cracked mac os running on a pc? Can you really get xcode and the iphone sdk running on something like that?

*sure enough looks like you can...

http://gizmodo.com/tag/dell-mini-9/

although if youre like me and plan on doing all your testing via the simulator, I imagine performance might become an issue (for advanced graphics at least). Hmm I dont know just taking a quick look it looks like the netbook + OS would run you around 450 at least... I have no interest in the novelty value (if I want a portable computer ill use a laptop). An extra 100 bucks for a mac mini that has more disk space, ram, cpu power and a 10x better video card seems like it still might be the way to go for me...

*btw I have heard a ipod touch can run the EXACT same apps as an iphone, so that might be a cheaper option for me when it comes to running 'field tests' (since I already have a cell phone).

[Juan]

You should do like I, make a hackinstoch,

What is a hackinstoch? *I assume you mean a cracked mac os running on a pc? Can you really get xcode and the iphone sdk running on something like that?

Of course you can run it, I do with my toshiba l300, the wifi and the audio doesn´t work, but the os yes, i have a 10.5.2 kalyway version, and aplications work fine
The laptop has an intel cpu, my pc has an amd an i never can get it running, i used a lot of deiferents versions, ipc, iatkos, kalyway, ideneb, ....

I forget to tell you that aple will "stole" the 30% of your profits of selling the game, it means that if you sell a game in 10 €, in every download 3 goes to apple and 7 for you.
I told you the mackinstoch because the ide for apple is diferent of eerything that you had worked with it, you can do a menu easily draging the panels, you have xcode open and in other window the menu, you asociate the code draging it into the botton you chosed, for example. So try it after buying the mini, because if it don´t look like for you, you havent wasted 500 € in a mini.

Personally, after i look for an engine graphic(i founded this) i was trying to develop for app store, but i had to forget the idea, it is dificult, expensive, apple is very exigent, and you won´t earn a lot of money, maybe 7 o 8 € por day, so definitively I forget it, i prefer develop something for computers, are more flexible, don´t have the limitation of the iphone (Do you know that the iphone only can run one progam? It´s mean that if you are playing a game and somebody call you, the user will lost his progress, or that the iphone can´t manage big maps? or it don´t have keys?) Too many disvantages for me.

[Zeal]

I forget to tell you that aple will "stole" the 30% of your profits of selling the game, it means that if you sell a game in 10 €, in every download 3 goes to apple and 7 for you.

Seems like a fair deal to me. Considering your other options when it comes to distributing an app, a 30% cut doesnt seem that out of line (especially when you consider the potential exposure youre getting).

I told you the mackinstoch because the ide for apple is diferent of eerything that you had worked with it, you can do a menu easily draging the panels, you have xcode open and in other window the menu, you asociate the code draging it into the botton you chosed, for example. So try it after buying the mini, because if it don´t look like for you, you havent wasted 500 € in a mini.

I already know im going to hate everything about developing on a mac (hopefully I am wrong). Thats why I plan to port my own engine so I can do all my application specific stuff in lua. In theory I could even do everything on my pc, and just send the scripts and resources over to the mac when its time to test/debug... thats the goal anyway.

[warmi]

Since the new model iphones seem to be trending towards better and better gpus, it seems like investing a little more in the better graphics card might pay off down the road eh?

It doesn't matter. The simulator is not using the graphic card at all - it is a pure CPU- based emulator.

[Zeal]

It doesn't matter. The simulator is not using the graphic card at all - it is a pure CPU- based emulator.

Ahh thats interesting.. I wonder how the simulator will perform when running serious G3S apps.. oh well I planned on getting an actual iphone sooner or later anyway. I am still glad I went for the nvidia gpu, since I may want to make some games on the mac itself.

So I went ahead and ordered a..

http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Pr ... ku=9519845

I know I could have saved a little bit of money upgrading the ram myself (likely only 40 bucks instead of 60), but meh whatever. Should have it in a couple days!

[masterfalcon]

It doesn't matter. The simulator is not using the graphic card at all - it is a pure CPU- based emulator.

Ahh thats interesting.. I wonder how the simulator will perform when running serious G3S apps.. oh well I planned on getting an actual iphone sooner or later anyway. I am still glad I went for the nvidia gpu, since I may want to make some games on the mac itself.

So I went ahead and ordered a..

http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Pr ... ku=9519845

I know I could have saved a little bit of money upgrading the ram myself (likely only 40 bucks instead of 60), but meh whatever. Should have it in a couple days!

In my experience, the simulator appears to have its performance limited to roughly the same as the original iPhone. At least in the 3.1b3 SDK. This is a good thing though. That way you can get somewhat realistic performance without having a device. Of course it's not perfect, no accelerometer for example.

[warmi]

It doesn't matter. The simulator is not using the graphic card at all - it is a pure CPU- based emulator.

Ahh thats interesting.. I wonder how the simulator will perform when running serious G3S apps.. oh well I planned on getting an actual iphone sooner or later anyway. I am still glad I went for the nvidia gpu, since I may want to make some games on the mac itself.

So I went ahead and ordered a..

http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Pr ... ku=9519845

I know I could have saved a little bit of money upgrading the ram myself (likely only 40 bucks instead of 60), but meh whatever. Should have it in a couple days!

In my experience, the simulator appears to have its performance limited to roughly the same as the original iPhone. At least in the 3.1b3 SDK. This is a good thing though. That way you can get somewhat realistic performance without having a device. Of course it's not perfect, no accelerometer for example.

Yeah, frankly, code with a lot of blending tends to perform slower on the simulator than on the device .. on the other hand, CPU based stuff (particles etc) , depending on your CPU, is about 10 times faster ....( as expected)
Also, there is a substantial penalty when using touch interface on the iPhone - depending on the frequency of course, but generally it steals about 6-10 FPS , something that makes no difference on the simulator.

In other words, don't use the simulator for performance testing