The last few years has seen a lot of acceptance of the open source community. Gone are the days when computer geeks that use open source were regarded as ‘hackers’ and ‘pirates’. Mobile phone manufacturers all over the world are taking advantage of the sheer ingenuity of these resources readily available on the internet. The Apple iPhone and iPad are some of very good examples of mobile gadgets that thrive on ‘hackers’ App know-how and store; Apple also widely recommends it and other mobile phone companies are following suit. Listed below are some of the very best iPhone App Development resources and tools.
- iPhone Dev SDK: This is basically a melting point for iPhone app developers to rub minds and seek further advancements to their skills. You also get the latest news concerning the iPhone app development market.
- Test iPhone/iPhone Simulator: This is a third party platform web browser based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone web applications. This tool has been so far tested and working using Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 2 and Safari 3.
- PhoneGap: This is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. It enables building apps in HTML and JavaScript and still takes advantage of core features in iPhone. It is one third party platform that really enhances application development for the iPhone.
- Gigaom Blog: This is one of the most popular free to view blogs on the internet that majorly discusses new developments in the iPhone, challenges, and solutions.
- iPhone WebDev Resource Center: This website is particularly designed for likeminded app developers to share their thoughts and ideas. It is a community of web developers helping each other to create the best possible web applications for the iPhone. It requires a one-time registration.
- iOS Dev Resource Center: The center has a large store of technical and informational resources useful for developers; registered Apple Developers can access iOS SDK 4 for developing iPad, iPhone and iPod touch applications.
- GCC, the GNU Compiler: This Collection includes front ends for many programming languages, including C, C++, Objective-C, FORTRAN, Java, and Ada, as well as libraries for these languages (libstdc++, libgcj, etc.). It is free, and is available for AIX, DOS, HP-UX, Solaris and Windows platforms.
- The XCode iPhone Tool: This iPhone App Development tool integrates the editing of source code which aims to build and compile steps to a graphical debugging experience. It is Apple’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed to provide a view of your source code throughout the process of building. Xcode includes the Xcode IDE, performance analysis tools, iPhone Simulator, and OS framework bundles (Mac SDKs and iOS SDKs). To get the best out of this tool, you need to utilize an Intel-based Mac that runs Mac OS X. The download is free for all registered Apple Developers.
- The Accelerator Titanium Tool: Developers can use simple everyday JavaScript, HTML or CSS, and turn their work into native applications that appear and work as if they were written in Objective-C language. It is free to download and use, and is available for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems.
- The Coroner SDK Tool: This one is a whole software development kit designed to aid developers create high performance, multimedia applications and games for the iPhone without using Objective-C or Cocoa. Rather, Corona SDK utilizes the Lua scripting language, which looks very similar to Adobe’s ActionScript 2.0.
