Developing for iPhone on a PC? [duplicate]

Unfortunately this is not supported. Developing for the iPhone requires Xcode and Apple's gcc tool chain, and it is only supported on Intel Mac OS X (although some have gotten it to work on PPC Mac OS X).

NilObject is right that you can only develop for the iPhone officially on a recent (last few years) Mac with OS X.

That said, Objective-C isn't tied to the iPhone. You can write programs for your PC in Objective-C, which would give you experience without needing the iPhone and Mac. Objective-C is a standard part of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). It's rather easy to install with Cygwin.

If you really want to make iPhone applications, you should consider a Mac. You'll get all sorts of experience and can also program for OS X then. Since laptops were just released, many people are selling their previous models because they have upgraded. If you can find an old Intel chip based Mac Mini, it won't cost you much at all (a few hundred), but it won't be fast. The recent Minis haven't been updated in a very long time and are not a very good value anymore for their new price (in my opinion), but they may be available cheap too.

actually, there's an unofficial toolchain that works in windows and linux. you'll need cygwin installed on your pc to be able to work with it in windows.

here's a link to the basic setup: link

though this will not allow you to publish to the AppStore, it's just a good way to mess around with the SDK. Also, whenever Apple updates the iPhone firmware, you'll need to find/wait for the updated toolchain or do some hacking of your own to get the updates headers, etc...