I do some iOS native programming with the default controls that come with the framework. Sometimes I marvel at some of the iOS apps that just look insanely great and most of the time I couldn't attribute that to be built with native Objective-C and the Cocoa Touch control library.<p>I'm sure some must put the hard work to extend those default controls but on the other side I'm sure there are some 3rd party frameworks involved to bring that insanely great feel to the app. Is there a way to find out which framework and components are used in an iOS app?
What you are seeing are hours and hours of developers and designers crafting custom iOS interfaces, typically in Obj-C and Cocoa Touch. There are some 3rd party libraries that streamline this process, these are products of the aforementioned hours of work.<p>Almost no successful iOS apps stick to only using the default UI controls in the iOS SDK. The sexy UIs are part total custom development and part modified out-of-the-box UI controls.<p>The "sexyness" of the app has little to do with using native Obj-C, HTML5, or some combo (Phonegap) and all to do with the craft and creativity put into the design.
Most of these "insanely great looking" apps are done Objective-C and Cocoa Touch. It's really easy (even before iOS5) to pull it off. iOS5 of course makes it super easy with the use of UIAppearance.<p>Cocoa Touch has everything built in to pull this off. I'm working on an app right where the ui is "completely custom". I say it like that because I'm using all the default Cocoa Touch stuff, just "skinned" as you will.<p>Just because it's looks good doesn't mean it's an HTML5/JS app.<p>Get out of the mindset that Objective-C and Cocoa can't do this kind of stuff. With ObjC you can do pretty much anything your mind can imagine (within the hardware limits of the iPhone or iPad).<p>If you're curious about how to implement the stuff look up UIAppearance, and google stuff like "how to implement a custom UITabBar"
What you're probably wowed by is Photoshop - one of the secrets to a really good looking iOS app is to create many of the assets in PhotoShop.<p>If you're wondering where to get the underlying controls - <a href="http://cocoacontrols.com/" rel="nofollow">http://cocoacontrols.com/</a> - Cocoa Controls is a project of someone here on HN, I believe - I usually start browsing there first. You can usually find replacement classes - for instance, I used DCSwitch instead of the stock UISwitch for a client.<p>Also, with iOS 5, UIAppearance really helps a lot.
This question seems like it might get some good answers on Stack Overflow. <a href="http://www.stackoverflow.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.stackoverflow.com</a>