Filed under: Software, Developer, iPhone, SDK
iPhone 2.2.1 SDK on a PPC Mac
There's a great tutorial at Apokalypse Software for getting the iPhone 2.2.1 SDK working on a PPC Mac (up until now, doing development for the iPhone meant getting an Intel-based Mac). It takes some work, but nothing that will pose a problem for most developers. Before you begin, remember that you must have 6GB of disk space available. Also, if you've tried to install the SDK on your target volume before, you'll have trouble until you uninstall Xcode with /Library/Developer/3.1/uninstall-devtools.If you don't want to go through the hassle, you can buy an installer for just $5. As a guy who still uses his G4 iMac, I understand the appeal of using an older Mac.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Beanbag said 9:18AM on 4-02-2009
I would like an iMac g3 but my dad claims they are a waste of money and not worth it, but I like old things like that, if anyone has one up for sale contact me at Jackson.boys@gmail.com
Thank You
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Joe Moran said 9:49AM on 4-02-2009
I've left a comment for the developer on Apokalypse asking if this actually lets you compile and install an app onto an iPhone. Their instructions are essentially the same as ones I found about a year ago on another developer blog, in that it just gets the SDK installed on your machine and mods the Simulator config so it can run on PowerPC. What it didn't let you do was compile and install an app to an iPhone, which makes the hack interesting but not terribly useful for doing real development work.
It'll certainly let you get familiar with the APIs and comfortable with basic programming for the device, but that's about it. If this developer shows that compilation and installation is possible, that'd be fantastic, but I'm highly skeptical given that it's essentially identical to the other hack that I used last summer.
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Devon said 9:52AM on 4-02-2009
I wonder if everything works 100% reliably. If it does then this is obviously an artificial limitation designed to sell more new computers.
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Greg said 9:54AM on 4-02-2009
I actually bought an old PowerMac G4 with a 450 mhz processor. Upgraded it to a 1.4 ghz processor, new gfx card, and 2 new hard drives, in a soft raid. It's actually pretty sweet... plays UT2004 better than my MacBook.
I wish we could get an installer like this for other applications... maybe games too...
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tomas said 10:47AM on 4-02-2009
I love my iMac G4, but even with a 1.25GHz CPU, it is dog slow when trying to do any serious thinking =[, I can't imagine it trying to compile anything
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Porsupah said 12:35PM on 4-02-2009
Complete iPhone development on PPC is possible, including deploying to actual devices. The missing factor in some instructions is that codesign also needs patching, else you wind up being unable to sign the application, a required step to actually permit the device to load it. Once that's done, everything's fine.
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Great said 1:13PM on 4-02-2009
That's but How do you get the Iphone OS SDK 3.0 Working on PPC
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huperniketes said 1:55PM on 4-02-2009
One reader reported the instructions for installing the Beta 2 3.0 SDK works, but a change to the xcspec file renders Xcode unable to build/install on the simulator. Once I get my hands on it, I'll try to come up with a fix.
Alblue said 3:59PM on 4-02-2009
I wrote a freely available G4 installer at alblue.blogspot.com ages ago ...
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