What hardware/software is necessary to develop Mac or iOS apps in Delphi XE2?

Question

Obviously, one needs a PC with a copy of Delphi XE2. But, do you need a Mac or iPad? Mac OSX running in a virtual machine? ... Can you create and compile the application entirely on a PC?

Answer 1

You require a Windows PC (32 or 64 bit, running Vista or 7 - though XP has limited support) to use Delphi XE2's IDE and compiler. These simply will not work on any other platform, so you can only develop on a Windows PC!

With only a Windows 32 (or 64) bit PC, you can build Win32, Win64 and OSX applications.

To test/run 64bit Windows applications you require a 64bit system with a 64bit edition of Windows installed.

To test/run OSX Applications, a Mac system running 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) is required. A "Hackintosh" or VM running MacOSX will not work (and is a violation of Apple's EULA)!

To produce iOS Applications, you require the same criteria as stated above for testing OSX applications, with the additional requirement of installing the FireMonkey iOS package (containing the FreePascal compiler and FireMonkey libraries), XCode, and the iOS emulator.

The iOS Emulator will run Delphi-made iOS applications, though of course testing on the physical device is often considered better.

Answer 2

You can create and compile the entiry application on a PC.

You need OS X version 10.6 or 10.7 to test it on a MAC: Prerequisites

Watch Andreano Lanusse video

Found with Google: Mac in a VM

Answer 3

a bit late, but the question still stands (me at least, I'm researching the subject)

regarding the virtualization part of the mac, which is dismissed by everybody above, and how that is not possible to be used instead of a physical mac (same for the open-gl FM related comment above), I'd quote XE5 official documentation:

"All FireMonkey applications require a graphics processing unit (GPU) on both the target platform and the development system. The GPU can be accessible either directly or through virtualization" (http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE5/en/FireMonkey_Platform_Prerequisites)

Take note that this is not XE5 requirement, it will work as well with XE2, because having the GPU accessible to the VM basically means giving the VM direct control to it (in case of vmware, through passthrough aka VMDirectPath I/O, although in this aprticular case there are limitations). XEN, on the other hand, it said to do very nicely with GPU passthrough.

I've been using this method for a lot of other, non delphi-iOS related, activities that also require access to a physical GPU, and they all work just nice (the "how nice" depends on the chosen hardware so care must be taken there, of course).

so the short answers are: no, yes, yes.

as others said, it is advisable to test your applications on the actual target systems, so at one point you may want to consider purchasing some 2nd hand device for the job.