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
iOS 3.2 and later support this. Straight from the What's New in iPhone OS 3.2 doc:
Custom Font Support
Applications that want to use custom fonts can now include those fonts in their application bundle and register those fonts with the system by including the UIAppFonts key in their Info.plist file. The value of this key is an array of strings identifying the font files in the application’s bundle. When the system sees the key, it loads the specified fonts and makes them available to the application.
Once the fonts have been set in the Info.plist, you can use your custom fonts as any other font in IB or programatically.
There is an ongoing thread on Apple Developer Forums:
https://devforums.apple.com/thread/37824 (login required)
And here's an excellent and simple 3 steps tutorial on how to achieve this (broken link removed)
- Add your custom font files into your project using Xcode as a resource
- Add a key to your
Info.plist file called UIAppFonts.
- Make this key an array
- For each font you have, enter the full name of your font file (including the extension) as items to the
UIAppFonts array
- Save
Info.plist
- Now in your application you can simply call
[UIFont fontWithName:@"CustomFontName" size:12] to get the custom font to use with your UILabels and UITextViews, etc…
Also: Make sure the fonts are in your Copy Bundle Resources.
Best Answer
I don't really understand your question, but I'm guessing you want a UITextField which displays dots for the characters, which every password field on the iPhone does. For this, you want to set the secureTextEntry property of that UITextField (UITextField has such a property because it conforms to the UITextInputTraits protocol) to YES: