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
Best Answer
UPDATE:
The original answer below is obsolete as of version 1.2 of the SDK - you can now use the
fitBounds:
method of theGMSCameraUpdate
class:https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/ios/reference/interface_g_m_s_camera_update
Original answer:
The
MKMapPoint
type in MapKit defines a 2D projection of a map. Although the actual values of the projection are meant to be opaque, they turn out to be equivalent to pixels at zoom level 20. This can be used to convert lat/lon values to pixels, and therefore a scale, and therefore a zoom level.Start by defining two locations which specify the bounds of the region you want to display. These could be opposite corners of the bounding box, or just two locations, for example:
If you have more than two points that you want to include, you could calculate the bounds of them yourself. This can also be done using
GMSCoordinateBounds
, for example:Next, you need to get the size of the map view in points. You could use this:
But that will only work if you've already created the map view. Also, if you're using the sample code in the getting started guide, the frame is set to
CGRectZero
, as the actual size will be set later to fill the screen. In these cases if you're creating a full-screen map then you might want something like this:Otherwise, use the size which you're creating your map view with.
Now you have the info necessary to calculate the camera position:
You can then initialize the map view with this camera, or set the map view to this camera.
For this code to compile, you will need to add the MapKit framework to your project, and then also import it:
Note that this code doesn't handle wrap-around if your coordinates span across the date line. For example if you tried using this code with Tokyo and Hawaii, instead of displaying an area of the Pacific, it will try to display almost the entire world. In portrait mode it's not possible to zoom out far enough to see Hawaii on the left and Tokyo on the right, and so the map ends up centred on Africa with neither location visible. You could modify the above code to handle the wrap-around at the date line if you wanted to.