Well, after receiving my free iTouch from Key Bank, I’ve had a lot of fun with the device.  What’s more interesting is that with each app I play with, I come up with a few ideas for others.  So, I decided to look into the Apple iPhone/iTouch SDK.  Well, the SDK only works on a mac.  One might try a hack-en-tosh – but I had a better plan – exploit the current economic situation.

Buy one
I posted an ad on craigslist asking for a cheap Core2Duo iMac for $350.  And within a day or two, I had two offers.  So after years of swearing I’d never buy one – I went and picked up the better of the two:

There’s a lot of hungry folks out there.  Got a Core2Duo 2.8ghz iMac, 8gb ram, 80gb hd, and 3 years of Applecare for $350.  Includes box, docs, and everything it came with.  I picked it up right next to the Apple store so we could run it over and I had them run the serial number to see if it was stolen, verify it’s capabilities, and they did a quick test on everything.  Checked out ok.

Take it home
I blew away the machine and reinstalled everything from the install disks. About the same as doing anything on windows – took about an hour or so.  Another 2 or so hours of downloading updates and rebooting after each pack.

Set up VPN
I don’t want a KVM switchbox on my desk, so I decide to set up VPN.  I download Real VNC’s free viewer – and then set up VNC on the mac.  OS X includes a VNC server by default, but there are a few tricks.  Here’s the procedure:
1. On your mac, open System Preferences
2. Under “Internet and Networking” pick the “sharing” icon
3. Turn on the “Remote Management”option/checkbox
4. Click the “Computer Settings” button
4a.  Check “Anyone may request permission to control screen”
4b. Check “VNC viewers may control screen with password:” and enter a password
4c. Click ok
5, Select ‘Allow access for All users’ or enter the names of the users that you want to give VNC to
Done with mac side.

Download realVNC and install it on the computer you want to use to connect to your mac (client).
1. When you open realVNC, you’ll need to enter the IP address for your mac in the ‘Sever’ box.
2. BEFORE you try to connect, hit the options button.
3. On the Colours & Encoding tab, select Full in the Colour Level box.  Make sure your own desktop is running at 32 bit color or the eqivalent of the mac side or you’ll get the dreaded “Connection refused: connect()” message from realVNC.
4. Enter your password specified in step 4b – and you should see your desktop

Now I can control my mac remotely from my pc desktop.  No monitor switching/extra keyboards/etc.  My headless mac is happy.

Download iPhone SDK
Go to Apple dev center and download the iPhone SDK. Watched some of the videos and realize I need to learn Objective C. Started reading some of the tutorials and they’re not bad. Now to get hello world up…