Some of the Best iOS Tools for Developers

According to the latest smartphone sales data, for the fourth quarter of 2014, released by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, “Apple’s share of sales grew across the US, Europe and China during the important Christmas period, driven by a strong portfolio of devices.” The recent decline in Android’s market share will encourage more and more businesses to invest in iOS application development. The developers can use the tools and interface provided by iOS SDK to create, install, run and test native apps from iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. However, the iOS application developers still need some killer tools to increase their productivity and development quality.

7 Killer Tools for iOS App Developers

1) Alcatraz: As an open source package manager for Xcode, Alcatraz makes it easier for iOS programmers to discover and install templates, plug-ins and color schemes. The installation can be further completed without copying or cloning the files manually. As Alcatraz is installed as part of Xcode, the developers can easily select from a variety of add-ons simply by launching the package manager.

2) CocoaPods: CocoaPods is a widely used dependency manager for Cocoa and Objective-C projects. The thousands of libraries provided by CocoaPods make it easier for iOS developers to scale their projects. Along with being built with Ruby, CocoaPods can also be installed using the default Ruby available on OS X. So the developers can avail a variety of libraries to scale their projects without putting any extra time and effort.

3) FontasticIcons: As its name indicates, IOS developers can use the tool as an Objective-C wrapper for iconic fonts. After installing CocoaPods, FontasticIcons can be used in the Xcode project. FontasticIcons makes it easier for programmers to reap the benefits of iconic fonts in a manner similar to CSS in website designing. They can use the tool to easily change an icon’s size, shape, color and opacity. The tool further helps them in optimizing the icons for the high resolution displays of iOS devices.

4) Prepo: Prepo makes it easier and simpler for iOS developers to create icons and artwork. It’s simple user interface and drag-and-drop feature further enable developers to create high resolution icons and artwork quickly. Prepo allows users to export IOS icons at correct sizes and in one go. The users can further preview the icons both locally and remotely.

5) AppCode: AppCode is designed with features to provide advanced coding assistance to iOS programmers. It supports both basic and advanced code completion. When the programmer starts using a new class, AppCode with automatically suggest the corresponding imports. It can further adjust the code formatting options from a file, directory or code fragment based on the developer’s preference. The developers can use simple shortcuts to create a variety of code constructs.

6) Indigo Studio: As a rapid prototyping tools, Indigo Studio helps iOS programmers to not write and rewrite code unnecessarily. They can use the tool to design and experience the iOS app before writing the code. Indigo Studio comes with features to design animated and functional user interface prototypes, while focusing on the user experience at each step. The tool can even be used by the designers without development skills.

7) PaintCode 2: The iOS app developers can use PaintCode 2 to turn their drawings into Swift, Objective-C, or C# Xamarin code. The clean and readable code generated by the tool can be further copied directly into the project. The programmers can further use the vector drawing tools provided by PaintCode 2 to easily design icons, controls and other graphic elements. At the same time, they also have option to use their existing vector images simply by importing the SVG and PSD files.

On the whole, the iPhone apps developers have option to choose from a large number of tools according to the project’s specific needs. However, it is always important for them to check if the tools are updated for the most recent version of Apple’s mobile operating systems.

To know more about our expertise in iOS App programmer team. If you would like to discuss with a certified iOS App developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Few Tips to Effectively Develop Apps on iOS8 Platform

Apple is the game changer in the smart devices with its flagship products like iPod, iPad and iPhone. All its devices run on its own iOS operating system. Well there are many other players in the market in smart phone industry like Google’s Android and Microsoft’s windows but apple has its very respectable place in the industry. You will find many manufacturers producing smart phones and tablets for Android operating system or windows 8.1 smart operating systems. But there is no single manufacturer except apple (itself) that produces different devices for iOS. Well it seems as if apple plays a monopoly game in the industry; but the fact is different. In fact, apple doesn’t like to take any sort of risk for the quality related issues for its users. Hence it produces both its operating system and devices for its esteemed customers. Recently it launched its latest and ambitious IOS 8 along with few new devices like iPhone6, Apple watch to cope with the latest version. This time iOS developers have some new challenge to develop apps for IOS 8 platform. Let us discuss those points.

Efficient management of Screen resolutions: iPhone6 has a larger display than all its previous versions and hence this will definitely create some trouble for the iOS developers to make their apps run smoothly on the latest version. Now he has to consider the new screen resolution of the iPhone 6 devices for his app. Well it is not a very tough task for iOS developer but still we have to mention it as the basic precaution for the iOS8 development process.

Learn Split View Controller: In iOS8 there is a split view controller feature in the operating system and every iOS developer must learn and integrate this in their app. It will help in keeping two view controls side by side within the screen resolution of the device. This will improve the user experience of the application to a large extent. It is extremely important when we think about different angles of view of an application in horizontal and vertical manner. Hence as a good iOS developer, you must learn how to take the advantage of split view controller in your app.

New HealthKit and Apple watch can be integrated to your app: With the latest iOS8, Apple has shown some highly ambitious products for the future like Apple watch and health kit. The new device will ensure that the user is not only get the virtual benefit from iOS8 through different apps but also they can get some health tips and calculate some health related parameters like kilo calories energy burned, distance travelled etc through the Apple watch device. As an iOS developer, you can take the data of those devices to make your app even more interesting and useful by integrating those data in your app.

You can take a twist with Apple Pay: Apple pay is yet another adventure from apple to a move towards virtual credit cards and virtual money within a secure environment from apple. Though it is not yet established and has not gained that much market penetration in the industry still you should integrate the Apple pay in your app in order to encourage this kind of innovative ideas! If you are planning to hire service of iPhone app development company India, you must evaluate them to see if they are sufficiently agile or not!

We provide offshore iPhone app development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified iPhone app developer India from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.