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
Just use the sys.getsizeof function defined in the sys module.
sys.getsizeof(object[, default]):
Return the size of an object in bytes.
The object can be any type of object.
All built-in objects will return
correct results, but this does not
have to hold true for third-party
extensions as it is implementation
specific.
Only the memory consumption directly attributed to the object is
accounted for, not the memory consumption of objects it refers to.
The default argument allows to define
a value which will be returned if the
object type does not provide means to
retrieve the size and would cause a
TypeError.
getsizeof calls the object’s
__sizeof__ method and adds an additional garbage collector overhead
if the object is managed by the
garbage collector.
See recursive sizeof recipe for an example of using getsizeof() recursively to find the size of containers and all their contents.
Usage example, in python 3.0:
>>> import sys
>>> x = 2
>>> sys.getsizeof(x)
24
>>> sys.getsizeof(sys.getsizeof)
32
>>> sys.getsizeof('this')
38
>>> sys.getsizeof('this also')
48
If you are in python < 2.6 and don't have sys.getsizeof you can use this extensive module instead. Never used it though.
Best Solution
Now that we have the "just say no" answers to autorelease out of the way, I thought I'd add a tip on how to use autorelease more effectively. For better or worse not everyone's going to completely avoid autorelease-- if for no other reason than because Apple provides so many convenience methods that hand you autoreleased objects.
You can't just tell the autorelease pool to free up any objects that you're not using. There's no garbage collection, and how else is it going to know?
What you CAN do is to create a local autorelease pool and then release that when you no longer need the local autoreleased objects. If you have a block where you're creating autoreleased objects, you'll ensure they get freed by creating a local autorelease pool at the start of the block (just alloc/init it, no magic required) and then releasing the pool at the end of the block. And voila, and objects in the pool are also released.
Autorelease pools nest, so keep that in mind if you do this. If you release an autorelease pool, make sure it's the most-recently-allocated pool and not some other one.