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
You are setting yourself up to be in a continual state of pain. You simply can not design against exact resolutions; there is too much variation in devices for that, and by doing so you are going to be slapped in the face continually as you encounter new devices. Android has a lot of facilities for dealing with this screen variety, such as 9-patches, its density management, layout managers, etc. If you take advantage of those, you will be happy; if you don't, you will be swearing all the time.
But if you want to swear, I can't stop you. Just please don't take to the net complaining about Android fragmentation. :)
As far as your image being scaled due to the status bar -- yes the status bar takes a chunk out of the screen. How much is not defined, so it could well vary slightly between devices. The window background, as set by Activity.getWindow().setBackgroundDrawable(), will extend behind the status bar (and IME or other variable system decoration), so at least using that will reduce the variation. That said, the actual display space could be carved out for other reasons from the physical screen size; it intentionally isn't defined exactly what part of the screen an app gets to play in.
Best Answer
The statusBarFrame returns the frame in screen coordinates. I believe the correct way to get what this corresponds to in view coordinates is to do the following:
Now in most cases the window uses the same coordinates as the screen, so
[UIWindow convertRect:fromWindow:]
doesn't change anything, but in the case that they might be different this method should do the right thing.