With a wonderful form factor, design, and functionality, the iPhone is a fantastic gadget for web designers and developers alike. You’ll be pleased to know that a huge range of software is available to make the iPhone (or iPod touch) a perfect companion.
We’ve hand-picked a selection of 50 fantastic applications. To give you a taste, the software covered will allow you to choose a color scheme, detect a font, update your website, manage a database, plan your to-do list, track time, bill a client, write a blog post, or view website statistics.
You’ll be amazed at what an iPhone is capable of!
Color
Cliq Cliq
- CliqCliq – A gorgeous interface with photo extraction, palette saving and email support. Thoroughly impressive.
- Palettes – A productivity tool for creating and maintaining color palettes. You can grab colors from photographs, websites, or add them manually.
- ColorExpert – A similar app, capable of suggesting a colour scheme based upon a photograph or a chosen shade.
- Brushes – A powerful painting app with an advanced color picker, several realistic brushes, and extreme zooming. Great for throwing down a few colors for ideas.
- ColorSplash – Quickly and easily give photographs a dramatic feel by isolating a particular section of color.
- HEX RGB Colors Guide – Easy reference to HEX and RGB color codes – really useful.
Fonts & Typography
- FontShuffle (App Store) – A simple app for browsing and searching a database of different fonts.
- WhatTheFont – Take a picture of a font and have it uploaded to the web and analyzed in seconds to discover it’s name. Surprisingly accurate.
Coding & Development
FTP On The Go
- FTP On The Go – Allows you to log in to an FTP server, edit and modify files. Incredible functionality for an iPhone!
- PHP Cheat Sheet (App Store) – A simple collection of PHP syntax to offer a refresher course in the language.
- PHP Ref (App Store) – A quick reference “for all standard 5149 PHP functions”. Very thorough.
- RegEx Cheat Sheet – A pocket guide for regular expressions, something we all need a hand with from time-to-time.
Databases
iMy
- iMy – A full MySQL client for the iPhone for running custom database queries, saving of queries and exporting of results to Google spreadsheets.
- MobileCan – A full PostgreSQL client for the iPhone for running custom database queries.
- MySQL Cheat Sheet (App Store) – A guide to the inner workings of MySQL in your pocket.
- Wireless Database Viewer – Another tool for viewing various types of database on your iPhone. Apparently it supports MS Access, MS Excel, Oracle, SQL Server, FoxPro, dBase, and any ODBC compliant database.
Organize & Plan
OmniFocus
- OmniFocus – Brings task management to your fingertips, and has a powerful location feature for letting you know what needs doing in your immediate vicinity!
- Things – Sync with the desktop version and manage your tasks in the coolest to-do list around.
- Google Calendar – Check your Google Calendar schedule from anywhere, with various views for displaying appointments.
- iBlueSky – A brainstorming application for getting ideas out of your head and into your iPhone.
- Bento – A fantastic personal database on-the-go, capable of managing any information you throw at it.
Time Tracking & Billing
Freshbooks
- Jobs – Creating time sheets has never been simpler – add a job name, then press play to start tracking. Powerful, with no fluff.
- FreshBooks for iPhone – Track time on the go, then bill your clients. It’s as simple as that. Fully integrated with FreshBooks.
- Daylite Touch – A business productivity manager designed as a companion to Daylite on the Mac.
- iTimeSheet – Quickly record your daily activities, noting down which tasks took up various amounts of your time.
- TimeJot (App Store) – A time-based journal for exercise, meditating, or – most appropriately – tracking time spend on different clients, projects, or jobs.
Blogging
- BlogPress – A rich text editor, landscape editing, photo uploading and posting to multiple types of blog software.
- WordPress – The official WordPress iPhone app, for writing drafts and publishing on-the-go.
- iBlogger – A slightly confusing interface, but compatibility with a wide range of blog software.
- Pingle – A client for the Ping.FM social networking aggregator service, updating your status in several places at once.
Website Monitoring
Ego
- Ego – A delicious looking app for tracking Google Analytics, Twitter followers, RSS subscribers and Google Analytics.
- OSCStats (App Store) – Useful for checking statistics and sales for an OSCommerce system.
- Network Utility – Monitor server status and perform ping, portscan and WHOIS lookups from your phone.
- Analytics App – A dedicated application for monitoring Google Analytics data, with a range of different views.
- Mint Stats (App Store) – A simple tool for viewing a summary of visitors through a Mint installation.
Measurement
- Rulerplus – Lets you take measurements quickly and easily, and can be extended to make a longer ruler. We all know size matters…
- Scale Rule – A simple caliper for estimating the scale and size of an object.
- Caliper – Multi touch control for moving upper and lower caliper jaws simultaneously. Imperial and metric supported.
- RulerPhone – A clever take on a ruler application which uses any credit card to provide a means for offering scale.
File Sharing
Files
- Air Sharing – Mount your iPhone or iPod touch as a wireless drive on any computer, drag-and-drop files, and view them on your device.
- Files – Allowing you to store and view files on your iPhone, secure access with a password, and view all major file types.
- ReaddleDocs – Capable of grabbing documents from almost any source you can imagine: computers, web sites, email attachments, MobileMe iDisk, online file storage apps and even other iPhones.
- Quickoffice Files – A simple way to view Microsoft Office documents on your iPhone.
- ZumoDrive (App Store) – A basic application for accessing your Zumo Drive remotely.
Other Utilities
Twitteriffic
- Full Screen Web Browser (App Store) – A good app to bear in mind when you want a full-screen browsing experience.
- NetNewsWire – One of the simplest native iPhone apps for keeping up to date with RSS news. Vital for any self-respecting designer!
- Reader (App Store) – Another good application for subscribing to various sources of RSS news (including Google Reader).
- Tweetie – A very popular iPhone Twitter client for keeping up-to-date with friends and colleagues.
- Twitteriffic – The original and, with new features in v2.0, arguably the best Twitter client in the App Store. Free for an ad-supported version.
- QAsvn (App Store) – Ending on a technical note, QAsvn allows you to monitor a subversion repository for changes.
Please Share…
I hope you’ve discovered a few new applications, and further appreciate how useful an iPhone can actually be! Most of the software covered comes in at a very low price point – it’s all fairly affordable.Please feel free to share any of the other applications you feel assist with design and development on-the-go. I’m sure that there are others we’ve missed!
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