+2  A: 

I think you'll have to do some custom touch event interception.

In english: if finger moved, x distance, horizontally across cell, in that cell only, then show delete control.

Not sure how to turn off the circles to the left, but I do think it's a property like "shows reorder control"

JoePasq
Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to show the delete confirmation programatically (showingDeleteConfirmation is readonly). For now I'm leaving the the reorder control visible, but will probably end up intercepting the touches and showing a custom delete button manually.
rpetrich
A: 

I'm trying to do the exact same thing. Did you end up finding a way to do this given the existing API, or did you have to make your own custom touch handling?

Suresh
I could not find a way of doing this without subclassing UITableViewCell, intercepting and interpreting touch events, and showing/hiding a custom delete button. Too much work to bother all things considered. That was before 3.1 though--Apple may have added this for all I know (there was some other changes to table cells in 3.1)
rpetrich