This is a total newbie question, but do you need to have an iphone or touch to release an app? I have a fully developed app but I no longer have my iphone so I a cannot build my app for distribution. I tried building it using the simulator but that binary is not accepted.
You don't NEED a device, but you should really test on one before you think about submitting to the appstore. Using the simulator isn't a true representation of how the app will run and you could find it to be very slow in real life.
But as I said, you don't need a device to build for one. Just select "device" as the active SDK.
yes, you need a device for develop on iphone, there are the simulator, but if you want develop more than 1 app that show 2-3 images and play 2-3 songs you need an iphone\ipod (for test accelerometer, or gps, or camera, or similar)