To publish a native app on the iOS App Stores you need to be a registered developer with Apple. Note this costs $99 a year; if you're not yet ready to publish, you may want to delay doing this until just before you're ready.
Web apps
Don't forget you always have the alternative to make iOS web apps. These are installed from a web site, and with Construct 2's offline support they actually work very similarly to native apps! It doesn't cost anything, and it's much easier to set up.
Requirements
Here's what you'll need to get going.
Access to a Mac
Unfortunately you can't set everything up from Windows. Apple require you to have access to a Mac. For each app you want to make, you'll need a Mac to generate some supporting files. You might know someone with one you can borrow. If you're really stuck, have a look at MacinCloud where you can rent a Mac online - but we haven't tried it ourselves yet! If you give it a go, let us know in the comments.
If you want to buy one, the cheapest Mac is the Mac mini.
An iOS device
You'll need an iPhone or iPad to test on.
$99/yr subscription
Apple charge iOS developers $99 a year. This is what Apple charge - unfortunately there's no way around this fee.
Sign up
First of all, head to the iOS Dev Center and enroll as an iOS developer. This will cost $99 for the first year's subscription. You'll need to create an Apple ID if you don't have one already.
Once you're registered, return to the iOS Dev Center and click iOS Provisioning Portal. (The URL is here as of October 2011, but may go out of date.)
To build for iOS on PhoneGap, we need a "mobileprovision" file. To get one of these we need:
1. A development certificate
2. A registered device
3. An App ID
Let's get all three of these now. You'll need to do the following steps from a Mac.