See part two on coding your App.
Love it or hate it, it's tough to argue about the success of the Apple App Store. While this venture might be a successful cash cow business model for Apple, how does business fare for the app developer? Pretty good, it turns out.
One of the poster children for successful app development is Joel Comm. Or, as he is better known, the developer of iFart. The sales claims for this little app blew away the competition, with sales of 113,885 downloads during a two-week period in December 2008.
Those are some pretty sobering statistics to digest while standing in the unemployment line. So what's a poor (read: really poor) developer to do? Why, make your own app, right? Not so fast, bucko.
Making an Apple iPhone/iPod Touch app is not a venture that should be undertaken lightly. There are two significant investments that you must be willing to make:
Granted, there are a couple of corners that you could cut for reducing development costs. You could be a rogue developer and rely solely on the iPhone SDK iPhone Simulator for your app testing. You could harvest the extensive library of Apple sample apps for your code. You could just "blow on your arm" for your app content. Even after all of these cost-saving efforts, however, you are still going to need an Intel-based Mac and a subscription to the Apple iPhone Developer Program.

First things first, though; let's build a machine that's able to support the iPhone SDK app development environment. No, we aren't going to create the illegal kind of "Hackintosh," a non-Apple-branded Mac OS X clone computer -- rather, we are going to bundle the lowest-possible-cost Mac computer development platform. Be forewarned, this project will void your warranty.
My first attempt at creating an iPhone app dev system was housed on a 16GB CompactFlash media card. There are many sites that will guide you through this process. Unfortunately, this system wasn't stable enough to reliably code a major iPhone app.
My second attempt at creating an iPhone app dev system was a complete success. Furthermore, the investment (on my part) was minimal, because I already had many of the components on hand. Here is the complete laundry list for building your own Apple-based iPhone app dev system Apple-based from scratch.
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I have a great idea for an iphone app, but I have school and other stuff to do, is there a place to find iphone app developers?
from Laurel, MS
when is part 2 going to be coming out??
becerra, i'm an iphone developer, whats your idea?
I have some ideas for an app? How do you create them?
greiss122, I have some ideas I would like to speak to you a about, can i get some contact information. Do you have a portfolio of work?
Here is my idea:
make an app that allows you to use the inteface of different kinds of iPods: like a picture of a nano, and you can circle your finger on the button and it would scroll. Also allow them to play music and stuff like it would look like on a real nano.
Interesting article - I started my development with a Mac mini as well since I thought it would be the cheapest option. Eventually, I had to get a laptop though.
@monkeywhizdube - that is a pretty cool idea. Have you had any luck getting a developer to help you?
- MattjDrake
- http://howtomakeiphoneapps.com
Looking for someone to help with a killer app idea for a fun and challenging mathematical game that could hold big potential.
Hi Greiss22
Re: Pet-friendly lodging application for iPhone
We are the largest publisher of pet-travel information. We would like to investigate converting our database into an iPhone app.
Please contact me as soon as you can.
Harvey Barish
barish1@earthlink.net
Hi i have a good idea for a app, is there anybody who can help me build it? i beleve that this is a fab idea and is a deffo must... cheers Scott.