No, I purchased a mac mini just for the purpose of compiling, testing and submitting games for ios.
I had your same thought about refusal to buy a mac, matter of fact I hackintoshed one of my laptops. The problem is, the latest Xcode requires the latest oSX. Getting the latest OSX running on a hackintosh is time consuming, if it will even work. I gave up. Now my kids use the Mac Mini for playing games on or doing homework. I use it to submit games/apps.
As for hurdles, depends on how you are planning on compiling. Using phonegap through xcode is going to take some reading and work the first time. CocoonJS is pretty easy.