Considering dev for money - what need to know, what Mac, can do it on jailbroken iOS?

[l..k]

I am thinking of giving up my stresfull job in corporation and do something creative

But to start with I would like to first spend a couple evenings porting some of my old ideas to ipad and try to sell it to get some courage that I can live on it and it is worth to spend few $k for Mac, various iPad,iPod,iPhone.

Can I sign up for developer program and use my jailbroken iPhone for testing without resorting to loose the jalbreak and all cydia stuff?

What about Mac - does it really matter wheter it is Core 2 duo with 2G RAM or i5 with 4G or more RAM? I have no experience with Mac Right now I rather consider buying old Core 2 duo with Show Leopard. Are there out of the box application for graphic development on OSX? Graphic developement is the only thing I can think of which will run better with more RAM and newer graphic card.

I have already learnt objective-C and have hughe knowledge/experience so I am confident of giving a try but you know there are costs of living and I do not want to add now hughe costs of HW/SW before I start earning.

Thanks in advance!

Edit:
Well, I just noticed that the c2d mini has DVD drive whilst i5 mini doesn't have. That's tricky decision.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

If you feel like learning how to develop your own apps you can do so for free. Go to iTunes on your iPad, click on 'iTunesU' at the bottom right hand side, select 'Universities and Colleges', then scroll to Stanford. Scroll right through the courses and you'll find a 25 lecture course on programming iPad apps. It's free and, by the end of the course, you'll be able to program some simple apps yourself. It's a great resource from one of the best Universities in the world.

Tim

 

[l..k]

Not exactly what I was looking for but thanks I will check the courses.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

OK - sorry about that - hope you get some better responses.....

Tim

 

[thewitt]

I'm not really sure what kind of answer you are looking for.

If you have never done any iOS programming install the SDK and go through the Stanford University course material. It's a great introduction to programming on iOS devices.

You are not likely to port your existing applications to the iPad in a couple of evenings... It typically takes two months for our new hires to become proficient enough in iOS programming to put out a simple application. Many months of extensive work is necessary to master the device and actually become proficient.

With hundreds of thousands of Apps in the App Store, any ideas you have to get rich quick by throwing together a couple of Apps will quickly become based in reality of marketing and getting your App noticed among the hundreds released each week.

Good luck. If you are serious about it, after six months of hard work let me know via a PM and if we are looking for programmers for any specific projects we can talk about options.

We get a dozen applications a week for iOS programming jobs, mostly from independent developers with one or more Apps already in the App Store.

-t

 

[HTMLEgg]

Goodluck. For the Mac, I think you would be fine with the most basic model. Although a big screen would be very helpful.

 

[arckadian]

As far as the Mac goes as long as you have the bare minimum to run snow leopard you are good. If you have better just means you won't have to update as much when the next version comes out.

 

[l..k]

I finally bought the newest Mac Mini with i5 CPU and it seems I regret this decision The system is very unstable. I do not know if it is Lion problem or HT in CPU. Googling here and there I found lots of questions about how to disable HT on i5/i7 mini, unfortunately with no answer In fact I wrote a simple C program testing extensively threading and it hangs.
However Xcode works ok so it's not a disaster for me. Perhaps I have to wait a year, hehe, till the Lion would be mature and fully supported.

Edit: if anyone know how to disable HT please reply! I found some HP EFI system which provide such efi command "cpuconf" but I do not have such EFI for my mini.

 

[l..k]

Just another *stupid* question. Is the $99/year member fee a calendar year or a year fee? I cannot find it anywhere so I assume the worst i.e. calendar year.

I would like to see even my first steps on my devices but if I have to pay $99 for the 3 months it sounds ridiculous.

 

[thewitt]

It's for 12 months starting when you pay the fee.

-t