Lately, I’ve been collecting the best resources that I can find to help iOS app developers. Now my list is not complete yet because I’ve decided to start small with this. Also, there can easily be alternatives out there but I want to keep it simply and really who needs a blizzard of 1000s of links when you just want to be able to make a quick decision.

Here is what I have so far, what do you think?

Infrastructure

Backend services that are hard and expensive to do on your own can be handed off to experts who will help manage these activities at low cost.

Bluehost Web Hosting – Bluehost is an easy to use web hosting service that you can use to set up your custom domain, branded email address and host your WordPress and/or Ruby on Rails installation. It’s a great deal for the price when you are just starting out.

price: $5.95 per month (affiliate)

Test Flight – a service to help you manage your beta testers.  You get reports, team management, crash reports and painless beta app distribution.

price: free

Urban Airship – these guys will help you manage push notifications, subscriptions and in-app purchases.

price: free to $499 per year

Parse – now this is really cool. You can use parse to create your own RESTful web service on their backend. It takes 20 minutes to set up and you can use this in your iOS app, Android app and even on your website.

price: free to $99 per month (currently in beta)

Design

Mobile apps require nice interfaces, icons and overall design. Programming is only part of the task in developing an app. Here are some trainings and other types of resources about mobile app design.

Tapptics – if you want to completely customize your app’s graphics Jen from Tappics can help you out. Her product includes 100′s of design files, tutorials on using graphics programs to make UI elements and developer tutorials for customizing UI. She throws in some marketing and outsourcing tips as well.

price: $97-$597 (affiliate)

Mobile Patterns – this is a website about mobile designs so you can use this as a source of inspiration about your own mobile app designs.
price: free

Glyphish – icons that you can use in your tab bar and toolbars.
price: $29

OmniGraffle – this is a state of the art storyboarding system that helps you design iOS apps and also other constructs like flow charts. Available for Mac and iPad.
price: $49 for iPad, $199 for Mac (affiliate)

Training

iOS SDK is only one thing that you will need to know about to really make killar apps. Here are some other areas where you can expand your technical reach.

Rails for Zombies – Ruby on Rails is a great system used to develop web services. You can use this as a backend for your app and as a website for your audience as a whole. Ruby on Rails can be developed to a low cost web host like BlueHost. Rails for Zombies is a free tutorial site where you can learn the basics.

price: free

Third Party Frameworks

While you can spend your entire iOS developer career using iOS SDK there are times when you decide you need help. Open source or paid third party frameworks can save you weeks of coding and help deliver a superior experience to your users.

RestKit – RestKit is a very high level framework that gives your app the ability to interact with RESTful web services. RestKit closely follows the iOS design patterns with Core Data style object mapping and its built right on top of NSURLConnection. Core Data integration is provided as well as automatic JSON parsing.

price: free

PhoneGap – PhoneGap is an alternative to iOS SDK which gives you the option to create native apps using HTML5. Web developers interested in cross-platform apps may be interested in this project.

price: free

COCOS2D – you can use this framework to create 2D games for iOS. You get all the stuff that you need for games built in like the game loop and collision detection.

price: free

Outsourcing

When you are really busy like all of use you have to get creative in order to get things done. One way to keep things moving along even when you don’t have the time or expertise is outsourcing. Here are some resources where you can get help.

99 Designs – get your app icon, user interface and even website designed by pros from around the world. You set the price and designers submit proposals. You pick the winner, pay the designer and get to use the image in your app.
price: you set the price (~$400 per design)

Elance – hire software developers, designers, writers and more from around the world. Great way to farm out app components (especially things you don’t have time to figure out). You can also get apps built up from scratch for as little as $5,000 (this varies on the nationality of the developer and the quality you can expect of course).
price: bidding system

Getting More Help

Sometimes you want to cast your net wide to find the answers to your questions. Here are the top places that I go to when I need help.

Apple Developer Forums – Apple hosts its own developer forums where you can get help from your peers. For topics under NDA this is the only place to get help but you must be a registered Apple developer.
price: free

iPhone Dev SDK – this is another forum where you will see lots of activity and it’s pretty easy to get help here.

price: free

Stack Overflow – a very modern social networking site for all kinds of developers to network and help each other out. Here is a good place to go to get help on iOS, but also non-iOS topics.

price: free