The only app development I have fiddled with has been utilizing the Titanium Appcelerator SDK, which, depending on what kind and scale of app you are looking at developing, can be quite useful.
If you have the required Xcode and Hackintosh/Mac then you can also consider a mobile framework like Titanium Appcelerator (converts Javascript into native iOS/Android code). It will be a lot quicker to learn than objective C, and should be fine for a simple app like you envision.
Depending on the type of app you would like to develop you might be better off finding some decent javascript developers (available in much more abundance I would imagine) and hooking them up with a installation of the Titanium Appcelerator/Developer SDK. I have started taking a look at it and...