We've just spent a few months writing a component of our stack that uses Objective-C/Cocoa, because it's the only environment that supports a very specific API that isn't available on any other platform to same the level of quality.
We used an HTTP server[1] around it, exposing an RPC style interface. Our app exports metrics with a StatsD client[2] we wrote.
The good news is, it's just what hoped it would be. The app performs incredibly well, and having access to the APIs like GCD and so on is great. The downside is that it's a pain putting the application into production. Being forced to use Mac hardware is incredibly annoying. (We knew this would be the trade off.)
All our dedicated Mac Minis came with 10.7 on them from the hosting company. Upgrading to 10.8 required someone to be present, or attached to the KVM just press next on an iCloud wizard before it boots back in, and I'm always worried that a point release might do something odd.
VMWare ESXi 5.1 supports running OS X 10.8 on top of Mac hardware (legally), so we're leaning towards using that to make the managing the machines slightly easier - being able to snapshot and rollback if an upgrade does something odd or drop into the console if we lose remote access.
We used an HTTP server[1] around it, exposing an RPC style interface. Our app exports metrics with a StatsD client[2] we wrote.
[1]: https://github.com/mattstevens/RoutingHTTPServer
[2]: https://github.com/newspaperclub/statsd-cocoa
The good news is, it's just what hoped it would be. The app performs incredibly well, and having access to the APIs like GCD and so on is great. The downside is that it's a pain putting the application into production. Being forced to use Mac hardware is incredibly annoying. (We knew this would be the trade off.)
All our dedicated Mac Minis came with 10.7 on them from the hosting company. Upgrading to 10.8 required someone to be present, or attached to the KVM just press next on an iCloud wizard before it boots back in, and I'm always worried that a point release might do something odd.
VMWare ESXi 5.1 supports running OS X 10.8 on top of Mac hardware (legally), so we're leaning towards using that to make the managing the machines slightly easier - being able to snapshot and rollback if an upgrade does something odd or drop into the console if we lose remote access.