Mac and iOS Development Toolbox

I have been building for the Mac and iOS for the last couple of years and the list of tools I have ben using has been growing (and shrinking).  There is a great development community around the Mac / iOS. There are a lot of other tools / code out there that you can read to learn more.

Tools

• Xcode 4 – Xcode 4 is a big jump from 3. I have to admit Visual Studio is great, yet I like the simple yet complete IDE.  You can get this in the AppStore or from the developer site.
• CodePilot – a good tool for searching through source code and files.
• AppCode – this is a new IDE to the market from JetBrains. It has a lot of great potential with the backing of JetBrains.
• Accessorizer – This is a must have tool for XDE. It helps to enforce coding styles and reduces typing. You can pick this up in the AppStore.
• TeamCity – This is what I use to do Continuous Integration builds for my projects.
• AppScanner – Find what might get you rejected before submitting your app. It will look for private API usage.
• OmniGraffle – A great tool to use for designing just about anything. I use it to do most of my iPhone / iPad layouts. Helps make doing the UI much easier.
• Kaleidoscope – Probably the best diff tool for the Mac. Great UI and integration with just about everything.
• Versions – A great tool for use with Subversion. Although I am a command line guy, I use it to watch projects I am interested in or use.
• SourceTree – A great tool for use with Mercurial and Git. Again, I am a command line guy, but I use it to watch projects I am interested in or use.
• CSSEdit – Do you have a love / hate relationship with CSS? This will make you forget most of the hate.
• TextMate – The jack of all trades text editor.
• XScope – If you do a lot of web development, you will love this tool. It makes doing pixel perfect measurements a breeze on screen.
• HTTPScoop – A great tool for sniffing HTTP traffic.
• HTTP Client – A great tool to test out those web sites to see what is going on.
• SOAP Client – I don’t use this a much anymore, but if you run across SOAP methods you have to use, good to have this tool around. I almost put this in the open source area because you can get the code for this.
• XML-RPC Client – Yes they still exist. If you want to test out those methods… this tool is helpful.
• Icons – Get those icons for you Mac / iOS app with shine.
• Sound Stage – After you make that great iOS app, record your demo to get those sales.

OSS

• Facebook
  • Facebook IOS SDK – If you want to do any Facebook integration with your app, this is the SDK for you.
  • Three20 – Good set of UI classes to help build your app. If you want to connect your TableView to the internet as a data source, this can help.
• ASIHttpRequest – If you are doing anything network you will want to use this library.
• JSON Framework – Framework for creating / reading JSON objects,.
• MBProgressHUD – If you are displaying a HUD or progress indicator and want something a little more than the activity indicator, use this.
• TapkuLibrary – A great library that has some good reusable tools / UI code.
• NSLogger – Track down those annoying bugs and extend NSLog.
• RestKIT – I have not used this yet but looks promising if you are doing REST calls in your application.
• iOS Azure Toolkit – Good toolkit to connect easily to Windows Azure.

Testing

• OCHamcrest – Toolkit to write matchers for your tests. Replaces the asserts you normally use.
• OCMock – Mocking framework for your tests.
• Tuneup JS – A set of extensions for the UI Automation Instruments tool.

Enjoy!