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
The C++ Standard reads in section 7.3.1.1 Unnamed namespaces, paragraph 2:
The use of the static keyword is
deprecated when declaring objects in a
namespace scope, the unnamed-namespace
provides a superior alternative.
Static only applies to names of objects, functions, and anonymous unions, not to type declarations.
Edit:
The decision to deprecate this use of the static
keyword (affecting visibility of a variable declaration in a translation unit) has been reversed (ref). In this case using a static
or an unnamed namespace
are back to being essentially two ways of doing the exact same thing. For more discussion please see this SO question.
Unnamed namespace
's still have the advantage of allowing you to define translation-unit-local types. Please see this SO question for more details.
Credit goes to Mike Percy for bringing this to my attention.
Best Answer
It depends. If the data is never going to change then static arrays in header files is probably a good enough solution. The problem is that if one day you do want to make a change to the data, you'll have to recompile your application, which might not be a concern for you. But it might also be a complete hassle, especially if you need to repeatedly try out different values for some of the data.
Personally I'd be tempted to store this data in an external file of some description. plists might be perfect for this, although if there's large amounts of unstructured data you might find them a bit heavyweight. I've often used simple plain text files for storing some types of data.
I suspect SQLite may be completely over the top, unless your data makes sense to be structured using a relational database, or needs to be changed by the app itself regularly.