It's certainly possible to develop on a Windows machine, in fact, my first application was exclusively developed on the old Dell Precision I had at the time :)
There are three routes;
- Install OSx86 (aka iATKOS / Kalyway) on a second partition/disk and dual boot.
- Run Mac OS X Server under VMWare (Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, read the update below).
- Use Delphi XE4 and the macincloud service. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.
The first route requires modifying (or using a pre-modified) image of Leopard that can be installed on a regular PC. This is not as hard as you would think, although your success/effort ratio will depend upon how closely the hardware in your PC matches that in Mac hardware - e.g. if you're running a Core 2 Duo on an Intel Motherboard, with an NVidia graphics card you are laughing. If you're running an AMD machine or something without SSE3 it gets a little more involved.
If you purchase (or already own) a version of Leopard then this is a gray area since the Leopard EULA states you may only run it on an "Apple Labeled" machine. As many point out if you stick an Apple sticker on your PC you're probably covered.
The second option is more costly. The EULA for the workstation version of Leopard prevents it from being run under emulation and as a result, there's no support in VMWare for this. Leopard server, however, CAN be run under emulation and can be used for desktop purposes. Leopard server and VMWare are expensive, however.
If you're interested in option 1) I would suggest starting at Insanelymac and reading the OSx86 sections.
I do think you should consider whether the time you will invest is going to be worth the money you will save though. It was for me because I enjoy tinkering with this type of stuff and I started during the early iPhone betas, months before their App Store became available.
Alternatively, you could pick up a low-spec Mac Mini from eBay. You don't need much horsepower to run the SDK and you can always sell it on later if you decide to stop development or buy a better Mac.
Update: You cannot create a Mac OS X Client virtual machine for OS X 10.6 and earlier. Apple does not allow these Client OSes to be virtualized. With Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, Apple has changed its licensing agreement in regards to virtualization. Source: VMWare KnowledgeBase
Firebase Cloud Messaging FCM FAQ is the new version of GCM. It inherits GCM’s core infrastructure to deliver messages reliably on Android, iOS and Chrome. However they'll continue to support GCM because lot of developers are using GCM SDKs today to handle notifications, and client app upgrade takes time.
As of June 26, 2012, Google Cloud Messaging is the preferred way of sending messages to applications running on devices.
Previously (and now deprecated), the service was called Cloud To Device Messaging.
Best Answer
This took me forever to figure out but I finally pieced it all together from the minor clues people left. You need to download the certificate for the APPID that you register on the developer portal. That certificate must be converted into a P12 format to be used on Windows. These commands in UNIX finally did it for me:
Step 1:
Where aps_developer_identity.cer is the file you download from the portal
Step 2:
Where APSCertificates.p12 is a file you export from the Mac Keychain. This is critical, you must import the certificate from the portal into keychain. Find it in My Certificates, open the disclosure triangle and highlight both the certificate and the private key, then right click and export them. Give them a password and save them to a p12 file.
Step 3:
You will be prompted a few times for the password you used to export the certificate and private key in Keychain and prompted again for new passwords to re-encrypt it all, but in the end you will have the file aps_developer_identity.p12 which you need to move to windows, then import it into both the Personal and Trusted Root sections of certificate manager in MMC. Then in C# when you use MoonAPNS and call the PushNotification class you give it a path to that certificate. Also make sure to remove spaces from the device token.