Is that a surprise, really?

XCode is a great development environment and the only one I know that supports Cocoa, the preferred toolkit for developing on OSX, which is the iPhone OS.

So, duh, the iPhone SDK will only run on OSX.

IF that was not teh case, then it would mean that Apple would have developed XCode for Windows, which would be a HUGE deal.

"leaving Windows developers stranded" … or, leaving them to go pick up a Mac mini and KVM switch.

As the iPhone runs OS X, that would mean the SDK is for OS X, and OS X development tools run on OS X (called XCode). I have Microsoft Dev tools for Windows Mobile and they required Microsoft Windows to run, which is fair enough.

I suspect that most iPhone developers will already be OS X developers and therefore have Macs, so I don't think that this is an issue at all.

Guess it sucks to be a windows box, again. What's the big deal? Do people think that you can get a development environment for windows mobile for a mac?

Well, does it require OS X, or doesn't it? This is Macnn, not Macrumors.com. Don't stick question marks at the end of a news headline posting! Either you guys have news to post, or you don't. Posting guesses just shows what an incompetent bunch of wannabe tech journalists you kids really are.

so read another news site if it bothers you that much.

.... Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 used to develop latest Windows Mobile applications, runs only on Windows machine, leaving Mac and Linux developers stranded.

Yeah, I'd say 'stranded' is a bit strong.

'Enlightened' might be better, after they're finally pushed into seeing what mac development can be like.

It was sort of obvious that if there was going to be any kind of test capability, like a virtual iPhone, it was going to be running on a Mac, not a virtual copy of OSX running in windows...

Isn't it always better when developers have a choice of platform?

To grrrr:

You seem to be a bit confused about what constitutes news. It is very clear from the article that MacNN is REPORTING a leak from a confidential source that SDK will only run on Mac OSX. Very similar to what Woodward and Bernstein did, oh some thirty-forty years ago about a break-in into offices of some political party, in Washington DC (I believe the office building name was Watergate). Not to compare the significance of the two (obviously), but the news reporting principles are the same. And your reaction was rude.

While it is pretty obvious to everyone out there that this is expected (why would Apple waste resources on developing Windows version of SDK?), this is important for another reason. There will be a large number of developers anxious to create apps for the iPhone, as the platform is rapidly becoming the dominant player in the smartphone market space. They will all have to buy a Mac. It may be a Mac Mini, but I can easily see many more iMacs getting sold to heretofore Windows-only developers.

Nice extra addition to the bottom line for Apple.