I've been thinking of buying a mac and trying to develop an application soon, but will I be able to test my application on my ipod if it is synced with my windows pc, or should I just sync it to the mac? Off-topic on this thread-is there any disadvantage of creating a new apple id just for developing and distributing the application?
To sync content (including testing applications) with a Mac, you need to format your device for that operating system. Same thing goes for Windows. Also, you can download Xcode and write projects for free, but when you get to the point when you want to both submit applications to Apple and test them on your iPod/iPhone, you will need to pay a $99 dollar fee. Do you have past experience with any sort of programming?
No, I was going to start from the ground up, but I realize that will probably take awhile, hoping to find a class at my high school or a local college that could help
That is not actually true. My iPhone has been synced to my PC since day one (literally, as a day one 1st gen iPhone ), as that's where all my music/video content is. When I bought an iMac and started developing, all I had to do was plug it in and let xcode write to it through the organizer. No problems going back and syncing to the PC regularly, and no need to format the iPhone...
No problem at all developing with a Mac and testing on a PC/iTunes. Was a bit of a pain setting up the provisional profiles in the PC iTunes for adhoc testing, and you have to make sure to follow PC naming conventions when dragging the apps into iTunes. But overall it works well enough.
I did all the development and dev testing with a Mac, but the guys I had beta testing for me were mostly using PCs. I sent them the app and the provisioning file - they had no problems installing once they grasped the "I just drag and drop these two files anywhere on iTunes?" concept
