iP* programming tip #2

Today's tip will deal with the setup of your development environment. As a Mac newbie I was having a hard time to get used to the environment more than a year ago -when I started Mac development- and I still suffer under windowitis. I know that Apple does not want to copy MS's Visual Studio but most people who are used to work with Visual Studio would put that on their holiday wishlist :-)
Here are a few starting points to get used to the environment:

• To work in one window only, use the "All-in-One" mode if you miss Visual Studio (http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/newinxcode23.html)
  You have to load Xcode, but not load any projects. Go straight to Preferences/General Tab, and you'll see "Layout: Default". Switch that to "Layout: All-In-One". Click OK. Then, you can load your projects.
  
• Apple+tilde – cycle between windows in the foreground
• Apple+w - closes the front window in most apps
• Apple+tab – cycle through windows

Please note that Apple did a revolutionary thing on the new MacBook Pro's (probably also the new MacBook's) ... there is no Apple key anymore. It is now called command key.

For everyone who prefers hotkeys to start applications you might check out Quicksilver. Automatically hiding and showing the Dock gives you more workspace. If you are giving presentations about your work, check out Stage Hand for the iPod touch / iPhone.

For reference you should have POWERVR SDK for Linux downloaded. It is a very helpful reference regarding the MBX chip in your target platforms.

Not very game or graphics programming related but very helpful is Erica Sadun's book "The iPhone Developer's Cookbook". She does not waste your time with details you are not interested in and comes straight to the point. Just reading the first section of the book is already pretty cool.
You want to have this book if you want to dive into any form of Cocoa interface programming.
The last book I want to recommend is Andrew M. Duncan's "Objective-C Pocket Reference". I have this usually lying on my table if I stumble over Objective-C syntax. If you are a C/C++ programmer you probably do not need more than this. There are also Objective-C tutorials on the iPhone developer website and on the general Apple website.

If you have any other tip that I can add to the website I would mention it with your name.

Update: PpluX send me the following link:

http://www.pplux.com/2008/11/24/the-return-to-the-dark-side/

He describes here how he disables deep sleep mode and modifies the usage of spaces.

The next iP* programming tip will be more programming related ... I promise :-)