How to Make a Phonegap App for iOS Without Mac

Is it possible to make a PhoneGap app for iOS without Mac?

According to this article, you no longer need a Mac?

https://web.archive.org/web/20150303180446/http://community.phonegap.com/nitobi/topics/detailed_guide_for_setting_up_building_ios_apps_without_a_mac

Edit: Link updated

How to deploy Phonegap app to iPhone without having Apple hardware (iPhone + Mac)

You can do it by compiling in the cloud with PhoneGap Build.

Check https://build.phonegap.com/

Build full-featured iOS application with just PhoneGap Build and no Mac-like hardware

The way to build an app and submit it to Apple is:

1. Compile the app.
2. Upload it through the Application Uploader.

In order to achieve 1, you need a Mac. The iOS SDK, which you need, comes within Xcode. Xcode, the Mac app that lets you build iOS apps, is only available for Mac.

There are other ways you could get the app compiled, but basically what you'd be doing is "renting" their Mac computers or servers (e.g. Adobe Cordova Build).

In order to achieve 2, you need a Mac too.

Are there ways to bypass having a Mac? If you have a PC, you could try HackIntosh, a hack to the Mac OSX that (ideally) lets you ran a Mac OS into a PC. I wouldn't recommend you that path, though. Even if you had a hardware with high compatibility wit Mac hardware, it would be a hack still and any update of any app, OS minor update, etc, could break your HackIntosh.

How to build Phonegap application for iOS and iPhone on Linux?

I'm afraid you can only use the iOS SDK, xcode and emulator on a Mac. You can also only build your app locally for iOS on a Mac.

You can use the PhoneGap Build cloud service to build your app for iOS but this doesn't give you access to an emulator; you'd need a iPhone or iPad to run the resulting IPA file on.

Even with PhoneGap Build you would still have to get a paid for apple developer account at around £100 a year in order to provision your app for iOS devices that belong to your friends or for deployment to the app store.

The app provisioning process is too complex to describe in this answer; there are plenty of tutorials online should you wish to go down that route.

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