When programming on osx, you'll need to find a combination of tools that work for you. If you have some vision, then the Xtools will work just fine for you. If however you're like me, and are not able to see the screen, then anything other than modifying existing code (or generating interfaces from code) isn't possible. Apple's interface builder, (the program it uses to generate the graphical portions of programs written in objective C) isn't accessible to voiceover users. You can build programs to be sure, but you can't use Ibuilder to make those nice aqua interfaces everyone loves so much on the mac. (at least not without sighted assistance) You can build programs from scratch that have graphical interfaces, but it requires one heck of a lot of patience, intimate knowledge of objective C internals, and a whole lot of sample code, because apple has a habbit of modifying how things are done from release to release, so something that works in 10.5 may not work in 10.6, and if you aren't using interface builder to generate your interfaces, you're going to have a lot of trouble making things work when a new release comes out. For that reason, I don't even try to generate graphical interfaces using ibuilder, or apple-provided sample code. Instead, if I need graphical elements, I'll either use apple script, (if only a few things are needed) java (since java takes care of layouts for me, and I don't have to worry about whether they're ligned up or not) or I'll just create a terminal application, which has no graphics, but can be wrapped in an apple script or something to make it launch from finder normally. There's all sorts of things that can be done to make stuff behave, but using interface builder (for us) isn't one of them. Xcode itself is fine, you can still edit compile and create code using the Xcode tools as long as you're not trying to use interface builder to build an interface from scratch. You can modify existing interfaces (to add accessibility labels, change types, and the like) but again, developing from scratch is impossible. All is not lost though, as mentioned above, there are other options, and of course, nothing says you need to use Xtools at all, you can use your favorite development environment (such as emacs) if you're already an entrenched developer, most of your existing tools can be ported to osx with little or no changes, and you can continue doing what you do best, making programs for others to enjoy. It's just the graphical components that will cause a bit of headache.
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