Whether you’re just getting into iOS development, or you’re a seasoned pro coding away since 2008, sometimes you need a few resources to pull off a successful application. Otherwise, your apps could get lost in the dark corners of the App Store. To help you build the best app you can, we've gathered our ten favorite resources for iOS developers. These tools can help you throughout planning, developing, and managing your applications in the App Store.

Planning Your Applications

Ahhh... the planning stage. It’s where the spark of an idea is placed on a whiteboard, paper, or wireframe sketch. This part of the development process is like magic, and here are a few applications that can make it even more magical.

Mockingbird (gomockingbird.com, free)

Mockingbird is a bare-bones, web-based wireframing application for those times when you need to simply get the visual idea out of your head and onto a piece of paper somewhere--in this case, the paper is digital. The application works like a program on your Mac, with the ability to create multiple pages to hound out your idea. There are several widgets that you can drag onto the canvas, then change the alignment, color, font size, and font color. When you’re done creating your wireframe, you can share your creation with others with a single click. While Mockingbird isn’t as full featured as other wireframing applications, it is tops when it comes to ease of use and sharing.

iMockups (for iPad, $9.99)

If you’re an iPad user and like wireframing your ideas as you get them, then this app is for you. This application gives you the ability to wireframe web, iPhone, and iPad applications, and provides many of the elements associated with iOS development, including: toolbars, tab bars, list views, pickers, and the iPad split view. The application has an iPad Pages style design and lets you share your finished wireframe as an iMockup file or a PNG image, and it allows you to save the product to your photo library. Unfortunately, this application isn’t without a few bugs. We experienced a few crashes when deleting objects in larger projects. Fortunately, the application does employ a safe recovery system should the application unexpectedly crash. But for $9.99, we would have hoped the application wouldn’t crash quite as often.

Developing Your Applications

Developing applications for iOS devices can be fun and rewarding, especially given the Objective-C language and Apple-included Cocoa APIs. Unfortunately, especially if you’re new to the language, you can run into some problems. Here’s some of our favorite resources for developing iOS applications.

Stack Overflow (stackoverflow.com, free service)

Running into problems and don’t have anywhere to turn to? Stack Overflow is a Q&A service powered by programming professionals just like yourself. The service isn’t only geared towards iOS programming. You can ask any programming question about any programming language and platform. Many times someone has already asked the same question, so just searching may provide you with quick answers. If you don’t see your question already on the site, just use the Ask Question button in the top-right corner. This site has come in handy for us multiple times, and we’re sure it can help you, too.

iPhone SDK Examples (iphoneexamples.com, free)

iPhone SDK Examples provides iOS developers with copy/paste code snippets that show you how to do everything from displaying images, to using NSTimer, to using threads. This is a great resource for anyone that’s just getting started with iOS app development.

Snippets (snippetsapp.com, $39.99, free 30-day trial)

Snippets is a Mac application that allows you to store small pieces of code that can be reused in application development (such as the code to show an image, make the phone vibrate, etc.). The application lives in the menu bar and gives you the ability to insert these stored code snippets right into Xcode with a few simple clicks.

From the menu bar, you can search through your code snippets to find the one that you want, then click on it to automatically paste it into your current Xcode project (or any other editor of your choice, for that matter). If you hover over the snippet in the search list, you will see a pop up containing the actual code. We recommend this application if you’re consistently reusing a lot of code, or just want to store important code snippets for future reference.

Iconspedia (iconspedia.com, free)

Icon design is a whole area of expertise on its own. If you’re a developer who’s not into the whole Photoshopping scene, then Iconspedia can help you out. This site is full of free icons you can use in your applications (just watch out for the licensing, as some are only licensed for personal or non-commercial use). When you download the icons, you can choose between a PNG or ICO file.

Glyphish (glyphish, free)

If you’re creating an application that includes a tab bar or tool bar, check out Glyphish. This icon set provides icons perfectly sized for tab bar or tool bar applications on both the iPhone and iPad. When you download the icon set, you’ll get a PDF and PSD file of all the icons, as well as PNG files of each of the individual icons. This is a great resource for any iOS developer, and there’s currently a fundraiser for 2x-sized icons for the iPhone 4’s Retina Display.

Managing Your Applications

This is the part that you’ve waited the whole development cycle for: delivering the finished product to your audience. Here’s a few tools that can make this easier, and lets you track the App Store results better than iTunes Connect can.

Applyzer (Applyzer.com, free service)

This free service lets you see how your applications rank among all of the iTunes Stores around the world--no need to go into each individual store to check on the ranking. Simply create a free account, add your application IDs, then sit back and watch the rankings be displayed. We like that we don’t have to give up our iTunes Connect account credentials, as that could pose a potential security risk.

AppViz (IdeaSwarm, $29.95, trial available)

iTunes Connect is really the only tool that Apple gives you for tracking sales, managing your applications, and generally checking on your applications. Despite what many say about iTunes Connect, it can be a bit wonky to use. Enter AppViz. This application for the Mac transforms iTunes Connect into something more utilitarian, providing you with graphs and charts of your iPhone app sales. And forget about going through every country to view the app reviews, as this application downloads all of the app reviews and presents them in one view.

In addition, AppViz can tie in with Applyzer to provide you with detailed reports on how your applications rank in the various App Stores around the world. Just give AppViz your Applyzer login credentials and it will download these reports when it checks for iTunes Connect reports. The $29.95 price tag is a bit expensive, but definitely worth it considering all that AppViz packs into a small Mac application.

iTunes Connect Mobile (Apple, free)

If you're not already using iTunes Connect Mobile, you should. This great little application for your iOS devices lets you see graphs of your iTunes Connect reports, view sales from particular countries, and track your sales history. Unfortunately, it's not as powerful as AppViz, but it will provide you with some detailed reports while on the go, and without having to log in to iTunes Connect. This free application can be found on the App Store through this link only (because it's hidden from search results). Upon launching the app you will need to login with your iTunes Connect credentials.

Know another great tool?

There are a ton of other development tools that can be used for iOS development, and there’s no way we could pack them all in this article. So, if you would like to share some of your favorite apps for development, let us and others know in the comments below.