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Table of Contents

Overview

Apple always officially required an Intel Mac to do iPhone app development, but I figured out how to get the iPhone OS 3.1.3 SDK installed for developing Original iPhone and iPhone 3G apps on your PowerPC Mac. This builds upon the work of whoever in the community created the custom installers and scripts found on Macintosh Repository. This hack relied on the fact that even though Apple required Intel Macs for iPhone development, they actually shipped universal binaries for the iPhone SDK up until iPhone OS 2.2.1 SDK.

But the 2.2.1 SDK is quite limited and the iPhone really started to come into its own with the 3.0 and higher SDK’s. These included critical improvements like Core Data, AVFoundation, MediaPlayer, and others. So I started to look into if it was possible to get the new SDK on a PowerPC Mac as well. And to my surprise, it is possible! And will even deploy to a real iPhone running 3.1.3.

In this document you I will walk you through how I did it.

Caveats

While this does work, there are some fundamental limitations

  • iPhone Simulator only runs iPhone OS 2.2.1
    • This cannot be overcome because Apple only shipped universal PowerPC and Intel binaries for iPhone OS 2.2.1 and lower
  • You must have a developer account if you want to deploy to device
    • There are probably workarounds, but I just did everything the official way
  • Your iPhone must be Jailbroken if you want to deploy to device
    • I think this is due to expired certificate authorities on the iPhone OS 3.1.3 but I am not 100% sure
  • This Xcode 3 is very old and is not much different than the original Project Builder
    • Xcode would not get its new UI style that is still used today until Xcode 4 which only runs on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard which is Intel only
    • The SDK does not support many basic features such as Automatic Reference Counting

Approach

  1. Install Xcode 3.1.4
  2. Force install the iPhone OS 3.1.3 SDK
  3. Force install iPhone Simulator.app from the iPhone OS 2.2.1 SDK
  4. Patch some installed files so everything runs on PowerPC

System Requirements

  • PowerPC Mac
  • Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 with all updates installed
  • To run on real device
    • USB 2.0 (it might work with USB 1.1 but no promises)
    • Original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch (1st generation), iPod Touch (2nd generation)
    • Device running OS software 3.1.3 or lower

Tutorial

0. Download Everything

AquaFox About Window

Internet Archive Macintosh Repository All Downloaded
Internet Archive Internet Archive Internet Archive

If you use AquaFox, you can actually do the downloads directly on your PowerPC Mac. But of course, you can also download everything on a modern computer and transfer it over to the Mac via AFP or SCP.

  1. iphone_sdk_3.1.3_with_xcode_3.1.4__leopard__9m2809a.dmg (Internet Archive)
    1. Direct Link in case you can’t find the exact right build 9m2809a
  2. iPhone_SDK_for_iPhone_OS_2.2.1_PPC.iso (Macintosh Repository)
    1. Also available on Macintosh Garden
  3. iPhone313PPCInstaller.zip (This website)
    1. Do not download iPhoneSDK.dist_.zip or iPhonePPCEnabler.dmg on Macintosh Repository as these are for the 2.2.1 SDK only
  4. Unzip iPhone313PPCInstaller.zip

1. Install Xcode 3.1.4

Install Xcode 3.1.4

Mount the iphone_sdk_3.1.3_with_xcode_3.1.4__leopard__9m2809a.dmg and open the installer file to do a normal install of Xcode. I selected all possible options, but you should only need the basic developer tools package. The installer WILL NOT let you select the iPhone SDK packages. Thats OK, we will do that in the next step. This took about 30 minutes on my 1.25GHz iMac G4 with 1TB SSD, so please be patient if your system is slower and/or does not have an SSD.

Note that you must install in the default location /Developer

2. Force install the iPhone OS 3.1.3 SDK

Force Install iPhone OS 3.1.3 SDK

  1. Verify that the iPhone SDK disk image is mounted with the correct name
    1. Open terminal and type ls -al /Volumes
    2. You should see iPhone SDK, not iPhone SDK 2 or some other name. If its not called exactly iPhone SDK then the installer will fail.
  2. Open iPhone313PPCInstaller.mpkg and run the installer
    1. This installs the entire iPhone OS 3.1.3 SDK except for simulators higher than 2.2.1. Those simulators are Intel only and therefore will never work on a PowerPC Mac.
  3. Unmount the iPhone SDK disk image

At this point you will have a fully working Xcode install and if you will even be able to create new iPhone projects. However, there are 3 problems that need to be fixed:

  1. iPhone Simulator.app will not open because it is Intel only
  2. The copy of ld for the iPhone SDK is Intel only
  3. Interface Builder cannot open XIBs for the iPhone because its plugin is Intel only

If you want to confirm that iPhone Simulator is Intel only you can use the following terminal command:

ichigodaifuku:~ me$ lipo -archs /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\ Simulator.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhone\ Simulator 
i386

You can use lipo -archs to check any binary on your system to see if it is universal.

3. Force install iPhone Simulator.app from the iPhone OS 2.2.1 SDK

Force Install iPhone OS 2.2.1 Simulator

One of the included files is iPhone221PPCInstaller.mpkg. This file was originally provided on Macintosh Repository but I customized it to only install one small part of the iPhone OS 2.2.1 SDK instead of the whole thing. It only install the iPhoneSimulatorPlatform.pkg which installs the Universal binary version of the iPhone Simulator as well as the Interface Builder plugin for iPhone XIBs.

  1. Unmount the iPhone SDK disk image (if you didn’t do it already as instructed in the previous step)
  2. Mount iPhone_SDK_for_iPhone_OS_2.2.1_PPC.iso
  3. Verify that the iPhone SDK disk image is mounted with the correct name
    1. Open terminal and type ls -al /Volumes
    2. You should see iPhone SDK, not iPhone SDK 2 or some other name. If its not called exactly iPhone SDK then the installer will fail.
  4. Open iPhone221PPCInstaller.mpkg and run the installer. This installs:
    1. iPhone Simulator app that is a Universal Binary
    2. Interface Builder plugin for reading iPhone XIBs that is a Universal Binary
    3. Runs a script that patches the xcspec files
      1. There is no credit for this script on Macintosh Repository
      2. If you want to know more about what it patches, see this blog post by Chris Hardie

4. Patch ld

ichigodaifuku:~ me$ chmod +x /Users/me/Desktop/iPhoneSDKInstall/iPhone313PPCldPatch.sh 
ichigodaifuku:~ me$ sudo /Users/me/Desktop/iPhoneSDKInstall/iPhone313PPCldPatch.sh 
--- iPhone OS 3.1.3 PPC Enabler LD Patch Post-Install Script Started ---
Verifying files: SUCCESS.
Target linker (/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/ld) and source linker (/Developer/usr/bin/ld) found.
COMMAND: Backing up Intel 'ld' binary to /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/ld.backup.intel
COMMAND: Copying functional PPC 'ld' over the Intel one...
COMMAND: Setting executable permissions for /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/ld
SUCCESS: PPC 'ld' copied and permissions set.
--- iPhone OS 3.1.3 PPC Enabler LD Patch Post-Install Script Completed Successfully ---
ichigodaifuku:~ me$

The normal version of ld that comes with Xcode is a universal binary but the the version that comes with the iPhone SDK is Intel only (for some reason). Its the only Intel-only part of the SDK, as far as I can tell. I provided a script to patch ld to make it easy, but all it does is backup the original and then copy the version from Xcode into the place the iPhone SDK is.

I wanted to make the script run automatically at the end of Step 2 but I could not figure out how to insert the script into the installer. If you know how, please let me know and I will improve iPhone313PPCInstaller.mpkg

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Change the permissions to make the script executable (this is not preserved by the zip file)
    1. Type chmod +x note the space at the end
    2. Drag iPhone313PPCldPatch.sh into the terminal window
    3. Press the return key to set the permissions
  3. Execute the script with admin privileges
    1. Type sudo note the space at the end
    2. Drag iPhone313PPCldPatch.sh into the terminal window
    3. Press the return key to run the script
  4. The terminal output should look like the code snippet above
  5. Restart your computer

If you want to manually verify it worked, you can use the lipo command again:

ichigodaifuku:~ me$ lipo -archs /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/ld.backup.intel
i386
ichigodaifuku:~ me$ lipo -archs /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/ld
i386 ppc7400
ichigodaifuku:~ me$

5. Run an App in the Simulator

Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5
Test Simulator 1 Test Simulator 2 Test Simulator 3 Test Simulator 4

We can’t deploy to device yet as there is more work to do, but you should make a sample app and make sure it launches in the simulator.

  1. Open Xcode and select File→New Project
  2. Choose any iPhone project you like but I chose “Tab Bar Application”
  3. There is a toolbar item labeled “Overview” where you can change the deployment target from Device to Simulator
  4. Now open one of the XIBs in Interface Builder to make sure that is working. Change some text so you know that the app runs properly when changed
  5. Click Build and Run to compile the app, launch the Simulator app, and launch your new app

6. (Coming Soon) Run an App on Device

In the next episode, we will go through the steps needed to get an app running on the device. Remember, this is before Xcode could manage signing for you, so you will need to do it the old fashioned way