iPod Touch compared to iPhone as development platform for iPhone apps
Essentially I'd like to know just how compatible are the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I would like to know if I could buy an iPod Touch (and thus save some cash) and develop iPhone apps on it or if I really should spend the extra money and put up with AT&T and get the iPhone.
What exactly is different between the two devices (other than the missing phone part in the iPod Touch).
Has anyone done this successfully? Or am I crazy for even thinking it?
EDIT
I've corrected the references to iPod Touch in the text so that @person-b won't strangle me..
Also, i would like to make sure that I point out the fact that I really am interesting in the feasibility of developing iPhone apps on an iPod Touch .
As far as general software development goes, getting an iPod Touch is a fantastic way to get into iPhone app development. I live in Nebraska, where AT&T coverage is spotty at best (my friend's iPhone doesn't get a clear signal in my house). You won't get the bells and whistles of a 3GS, but you'll save on the up-front investment.
I recently purchased a MacBook and a 32GB iPod Touch to do just what you're suggesting - get into iPhone app development on a budget. In the end I plan to pickup several more devices, but just to get started it doesn't make sense to break the bank. I've developed Windows and Linux software but I'm new to Objective-C and the Mac platform in general, so I'm expecting a learning curve. I'd prefer not to be forking over $100 per month to AT&T while I get up to speed.
Here's what I paid for new-in-the-box hardware and software from Apple to get started:
All told I've spent $1500 (including tax) to have a viable development platform. According to BillShrink the TCO of a 16GB 3GS with an average usage plan is $2800 (http://www.billshrink.com/blog/iphone-versus-palm-pre-versus-android/). Add in the MacBook and you're up to nearly $4000 in the first two years. I got 2X the capacity for $440...
While I agree that going straight to the iPhone provides the most flexibility, I also think that the iPod Touch is a great introduction to Apple's new software platform. You can save up to $2400 (depending upon how much your current cell plan costs) while getting a feel for the development process.
Update: One major reason to get the iPhone 3GS is to get OpenGL ES 2.0 support. If you want to do any advanced shader-based rendering, the 3GS is the only iPhone that will work. The 3GS is also nearly twice as fast as the 2G iPod Touch for OpenGL ES 1.1 code. Source: http://toucharcade.com/2009/06/20/iphone-3g-s-vs-ipod-touch-cpu-opengl-es-benchmarks/
As @Chaos noted, the iPhone and iPod touch differ in their hardware features. The iPod touch lacks:
As for the CPU speeds, Apple doesn't publish any kind of spec for that. However, the iPhone 3GS is definitely faster than the current iPod touch, which is a bit faster than the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G. If your app is CPU-intensive, you should test it on an older iPhone.
Another important difference is the networking capabilities of the different devices. If your app never has to connect to the Internet, then an iPod touch is just fine. However, if you're using the network at all in your app, remember that WiFi connections are nice and stable and fast, but 3G and EDGE connections are slow and crappy and prone to intermittent failure. Your app needs to be able to deal with a crappy Internet connection. You don't actually need an iPhone to test this stuff, though; instead, you can write a script to artificially throttle or interrupt your development machine's network connection. Craig Hockenberry posted a good method for doing this, which you can find reproduced here.
Other than that, the apps I'm working on work as well on our graphics guy's iPod Touch as well as on the 3G/3GS
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