iPhone SDK

The iPhone will be released on July 11 in Canada. I'm getting one, of course. In the meantime, I thought I'd get the iPhone SDK first.

Downloading the latest iPhone SDK beta was straightforward. Installing the package appeared to be easy too, except that the installation program would not allow me to install the iPhone components, without which nothing works. This is because the SDK ostensibly only supports Intel-based Macs whereas mine runs on a PowerPC processor. There is no reason for the restriction from the technical angle. My only guess is that Apple wants to force people to buy new Macs.

Fortunately, clever people on the Net have discovered ways to get around this evil hurdle. Thanks to tips by Mike Rundle at http://3by9.com/85/, I was able to install the iPhone-related tools manually from the installation package. Now, all the useful things: header files, lib files, compiler, linker, the iPhone Emulator, etc., are all in place for Xcode.

Next, when I tried to compile a test program, I got this error: "No architectures to compile for (ARCHS=ppc, VALID_ARCHS=i386)." To fix this nasty bit -- another hurdle thrown at PowerPC-based Macs, I must do the following (thanks to Tom Bradford's instructions at http://www.tbradford.org/2008/03/iphone-sdk-beta-2-possible-ppc-fix.html):

- Go to /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Specifications/.

- Find a file called "iPhone Simulator Architectures.xcspec"; make a backup of it and open the original.

- Notice in this file that the 'RealArchitectures' variable only defines i386 as a valid architecture; change that to "(i386, ppc)".

- Add the following just before the Intel section:

// G3
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc;
Name = "Minimal (32-bit PowerPC only)";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC";
PerArchBuildSettingName = "PowerPC";
ByteOrder= big;
ListInEnum = No;
SortNumber = 201;
},

// G4
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc7400;
Name = "PowerPC G4";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC for G4 processor";
ByteOrder= big;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 202;
},

// G5 32-bit
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc970;
Name = "PowerPC G5 32-bit";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC for G5 processor";
ByteOrder= big;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 203;
},

- Restart Xcode.

Now I've got Xcode on my iMac to compile programs to run on the iPhone SDK. All I need next is an actual program that does something useful or fun!