Tutorial: How to Develop Original iPhone Apps in 2025

iOS Developers out there, have you ever been interested in stepping back from the new hotness for a moment to revisit your roots and try developing apps for the original iPhone? This article will walk you through the whole process. A lot of things have changed since 2008, but its still possible in 2025.

I originally wrote this article as a followup on my article on how to get iPhone development working on PowerPC Macs like my iMacG4. But as I was writing it I realized, it had nothing to do with the host Mac and was all about the Original iPhone. So I changed the title and the focus a bit, and I think it came out well.

Let me know if you have any feedback or corrections. I'm especially curious if anyone here has experience getting this to work without an Apple Developer Account. But since I have a developer account, I didn't try to go the extra mile. But it makes the whole thing so much more accessible if there is no need to give Apple $99 every year.