Well, I must confess that what I propose isn't necessarily native iOS development - but rather, VM-based.
In my case, I'm using MOAI (http://getmoai.com). If you check my comment history, you will see I'm quite the MOAI fanboix, and I've given a fair bit of details about how it works - so please check my history for more info.
In a nutshell, I use Linux to develop MOAI applications, and I use the Linux-native MOAI host to test/develop/code for it. It works like this: Fire up SublimeText2, write Lua code for the MOAI framework, run the MOAI host with that Lua code on my local Linux DAW. Check in the MOAI Lua code to my repo - wait for my build server on OSX to check it out, package it into an .ipa file, run it on the iOS devices plugged into my Macbook.
You would still need XCode somewhere to deploy to iOS - but you can do all the development on Linux or Windows, and the MOAI app won't just run on iOS - but also Linux, OSX native, Chrome Native Client, Android and iOS.
And before you worry that performance won't be great - performance is great. :) And there is no greater feeling in the world right now than to be developing an app on Linux, and in a few seconds watching that same app being deployed immediately on Android and iOS devices in my lab, without too much fuss. Same look, same feel, same app: completely different platforms.
I really encourage you to check it out - and as long as you can convince someone to run the XCode build phase for you, somewhere, you can deploy to iOS simply as another target architecture, alongside all the other archs that your Linux machine can support (in my case my Linux machine also builds the Android product..)
Thanks for explaining that, very instructive. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to invest that kind of time into the transition, but it's something to keep in mind for sure. It arguably looks a lot less straightforward than development on Apple hardware, but perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way.
Oh its a lot more straightforward. For starters, you only need three things: a decent text editor, the MOAI host executable, and the MOAI SDK docs. All of these things can be found on Windows, Mac, Linux ..
Second of all, the MOAI API and programming environment is a lot, lot nicer than Objective-C/XCode/Frameworks.
But I say this, of course, with 4 years of experience in Mobile development, and 2 years with MOAI specifically. Of course I'm overlooking the training period I've been through - for a newcomer it may indeed look like a lot of hassle. But I swear, once you have spent a couple days building an app in Linux with MOAI, and then simply deploy it straight to Windows/OSX/Android/iOS targets, the value is obvious. I simply won't go back to XCode/Android/&etc. now - its just too fun to be building apps this way. One set of code, develop on your platform of choice, deploy all the way to the walled garden, and back again, around about the massive fields of Linux/Windows/OSX, and so on.
In my case, I'm using MOAI (http://getmoai.com). If you check my comment history, you will see I'm quite the MOAI fanboix, and I've given a fair bit of details about how it works - so please check my history for more info.
In a nutshell, I use Linux to develop MOAI applications, and I use the Linux-native MOAI host to test/develop/code for it. It works like this: Fire up SublimeText2, write Lua code for the MOAI framework, run the MOAI host with that Lua code on my local Linux DAW. Check in the MOAI Lua code to my repo - wait for my build server on OSX to check it out, package it into an .ipa file, run it on the iOS devices plugged into my Macbook.
You would still need XCode somewhere to deploy to iOS - but you can do all the development on Linux or Windows, and the MOAI app won't just run on iOS - but also Linux, OSX native, Chrome Native Client, Android and iOS.
And before you worry that performance won't be great - performance is great. :) And there is no greater feeling in the world right now than to be developing an app on Linux, and in a few seconds watching that same app being deployed immediately on Android and iOS devices in my lab, without too much fuss. Same look, same feel, same app: completely different platforms.
I really encourage you to check it out - and as long as you can convince someone to run the XCode build phase for you, somewhere, you can deploy to iOS simply as another target architecture, alongside all the other archs that your Linux machine can support (in my case my Linux machine also builds the Android product..)
If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to come to the MOAI forums and ask: http://http://getmoai.com/forums/