Surprise, iPhone SDK also works on PowerPC Macs
Posted 10 March 2008 @ 11am in Development
Though Apple states that the iPhone software development kit requires an “Intel processor-based Mac running Mac OS X Leopard,” developers have found that — with a little leg-work — the SDK also runs on PowerPC-based Macs.
By default, the iPhone SDK package available free from Apple’s site will run on a PowerPC-based Mac but omit the iPhone SDK-related files, installing only Xcode 3.1 beta and a series of other files. This routine is easily circumvented via the shareware tool Pacifist, which can be used to force an installation of the entire SDK package on PowerPC-based Macs.
Follow these steps:
- Drag the iPhone SDK package onto the Pacifist icon
- Select the top entry, “Contents of iPhone SDK”
- Click the “Install” button in the upper-left corner and enter your administrator credentials
The “Aspen” Simulator, which is a Universal Binary, will properly launch and emulate iPhone applications on PowerPC-based Macs.
Windows users are still out of luck when it comes to the official SDK, though developers are currently seeking alternative, Windows-based deployment methods.
Feedback? info@iphoneatlas.com.
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10 Comments
Posted by libertyforall1776
10 March 2008 @ 6pm
COOL! Thanks Apple for making it MORE DIFFICULT for *YOUR* customers… Geez.
Posted by bstevens
10 March 2008 @ 9pm
It isn’t working on my G5. Pacifist gives me the error message “The disk image “iphone_sdk.dmg” could not be mounted.”
Posted by jimich
11 March 2008 @ 2am
is it working on ppc with 10.4?
I cannot update to 10.5 on my ibook G4 (lack of ram)
Posted by iamwatson1
11 March 2008 @ 8pm
Posted by bstevens
10 March 2008 @ 9pm
It isn’t working on my G5. Pacifist gives me the error message “The disk image “iphone_sdk.dmg” could not be mounted.”
You need to mount the disk image…then drag the one package called iPhone SDK (it looks like a box, thats why its a package) to the pacifist icon in your applications folder. Dont worry about the folder called “Packages” the main package will install all of those.
It will work
Posted by bstevens
12 March 2008 @ 7pm
To: iamwatson1
If I double click on the iphone_sdk.dmg I get the message:
Warning
The following disk image failed to mount
iphone_sdk.dmg not recognized
What can I do to fix this?
Posted by NotSoFast
16 March 2008 @ 8am
So, I followed these instructions to the letter and everything seemed to go smoothly… except that when the process was finished, the SDK package bundle contents had been installed at “/” rather than at “/Developer”. Now I have two sets of the IPhone SDK installed, my original attempt using Apples installer which put everything in “/Developer” but doesn’t work on PPC, and now this attempt at “/” which is probably missing a bunch of stuff it expects to have already been installed…
I’m not sure if there is an easy way out of this mess. Is there an un-installer?
Posted by NotSoFast
17 March 2008 @ 7am
I tried the uninstall directions described in the iPhone SDK “About” file.
At the “/” directory, I typed:
sudo /Library/uninstall-devtools –mode=all
After all the package analysis was complete, the following lines were printed. Not much changed. I still see Documentation, Examples, Extras, Headers, Makefiles, Platforms, Private, SDKs, Tools, etc in my root directory.
Removing devtools files…
Removing generated files…
Removing cached syms…
Removing Java 1.4 reference docs…
Removing Java 1.5 reference docs…
Removing generated directories…
kextunload: unload id com.apple.iokit.CHUDUtils succeeded (any personalities also unloaded)
kextunload: unload id com.apple.iokit.CHUDProf succeeded (any personalities also unloaded)
kextunload: unload id com.apple.iokit.CHUDKernLib succeeded (any personalities also unloaded)
Removing empty devtools directories…
Finished uninstalling shared non-relocatable developer tools content.
IMPORTANT: If you are going to install a previous version of the Developer Tools, be sure to restart the machine after installing.
Finish time: Mon Mar 17 06:35:02 PDT 2008
ERROR: Uninstaller script must be located in a folder named /Library
Posted by preble
20 March 2008 @ 12pm
I experienced the same problem as NotSoFast (contents of SDK spammed into root folder, not /Developer), with the same results from the uninstaller. Note that the error at the end actually has a “<developer-folder>” before /Library. Ironic, isn’t it? Looking forward to reinstalling Leopard tonight.
Posted by gigeamircearaul
28 March 2008 @ 5pm
Same problem here. At least I managed to install the SDK completely (in the right place) without using Pacifist, fully working on my PowerBook G4. My root partition is still spammed with 5 gb of redundant crap for following this “Tip”, but thats why i decided to let others know there’s another better way of getting it to work:
1. Make the iPhone SDK.dmg read/write-able with Disk Utility using convert -> to read/write.
2. Mount the R/W dmg.
3. You need to delete some unneccessary file so that you can modify the installer config file, because the image is completely full. I choose the PDF in the root of the dmg.
4. Modify /Volumes/iPhone SDK/iPhone SDK.mpkg/Contents/iPhoneSDK.dist :
- Line 71 ( in function agreedToSLA() ) - modify “return false;” to “return true;”
- Line 81 ( in function SDKPresent() ) - modify “return false;” to “return true;”
That’s it. Now you can double-click the iPhone SDK package and install as usual. The Aspen SDK will show up and get installed.
Posted by nhm
8 April 2008 @ 10pm
Thanks, gigeamircearaul. I had a little trouble editing the iPhoneSDK.dist file even after deleting some stuff, so I modified your first step a bit. I mounted the original SDK dmg file and then used Disk Utility to make a new empty read/write dmg file and mounted that. I then used the Disk Utility “Restore” function to copy the original SDK disk to the new one and edited the file on the new one.