How to visually create and use static cells in a UITableView embedded in a UIViewController

You can achieve this in Xcode 4.5 and later versions, assuming your app is targeted at iOS 6+.

In the Storyboard simply create a UIViewController with a View Container inside it's main view. Then hook up that View Container to a UITableViewController that contains static cells.

Just like this:

You don't need a single line of code. Just control click, drag and select embed. The view controller containment is handled for you.

You are right. In storyboard, you cannot have a tableView with static cells embedded in a viewController. One way around it (I have not tried it myself, though, so I am not sure if it works) can be that you create an instance of UITableViewController in storyboard with static cells. Add an instance of UIView to your viewController, and then programmatically load the tableView of the UITableViewController into the UIView of your viewController.

pmd's answer works but in the event that backward compatibility with iOS 5 is required as well, you can do the embedding programatically using the View Containment API.

In the viewDidLoad method of your parent UIViewController:

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"MainStoryboard_iPhone" bundle:nil];
    MyTableViewController* vc =[storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"MyTableVC"];
    [self addChildViewController:vc];
    [self.view addSubview:vc.view];

    // ensure embedded view is aligned to top
    CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height);
    vc.view.frame = frame;

    [vc didMoveToParentViewController:self]; 
}

Don't forget to specify a storyboard ID for your UITableViewController with the static cells.