[m4x]

Apple isn't forcing you to pay if you want to run your apps, they're warning users and forcing them to take an extra step to run unsigned code. That doesn't completely prevent malicious code execution but it definitely helps which is a net win for users.

Complaining that they ask for $100/year to use their official distribution channel (which incurs ongoing costs for them) seems unreasonable considering the quality and quantity of tools they provide for free. Xcode is a pretty awesome IDE considering it's free to use.

[Fargren]

I have to ask, because I feel XCode is the worst IDE I've ever used. What about it is pretty awesome?

Instruments is pretty cool, though.

[m4x]

There's no way Xcode is the worst you've ever used unless your opinion is just based on personal preference (which is fair enough but not really relevant to the rest of us)

I don't think I'd say it's better than VS if that's all you're comparing it to, but it's pretty much on par. When I last used VS heavily it seemed marginally more robust than Xcode but the only real feature I liked vs. Xcode was the ability to use C# rather than Obj-C (which is less relevant now that Swift exists)

Other than that, every single IDE I can think of is relatively unpolished and if you're developing specifically for OS X then the alternatives are practically useless.

I'm really glad Xcode finally has automated GUI testing

[Fargren]

The other IDE's I've worked with for any significant amount of time are Eclipse, Visual Studio, and various flavors of IntelliJ. Eclipse is the worse of the bunch, but it has a few important features that XCode doesn't. Support for a multi-monitor setup, configuration files that don't cause conflicts every other merge, a complete set of refactoring options. That XCode doesn't have a Search Usages or equivalent for a symbol, forcing you to use text search, is downright weird; they clearly use that functionality internally in the Rename refactoring.

Stability wise, there have been a few versions that crashed a lot, but that has improved lately, so I'm not complaining. And I do love how quickly it opens.

I'm currently using AppCode for developing for iOS, and I find substantially better than XCode. It has a full set of refactoring tools, that I use constantly, better search, it actually creates folders when you create groups (unless you tell it not to, and I think that's the sane default). I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, since it does cost as a much as a Developer License.

[MCRed]

Everything. The way debugging is integrated. Interface Builder-- nobody has anything like that to compete with it. It's totally integrated so you can really develop efficiently, and the simulator makes testing quick and easy.

I've never seen an IDE that was anywhere close. I suspect that people who hate Xcode are simply familiar with something else and find it frustrating to use it (though they've spent a few hours with it and hundreds of hours with something else they're expect it to beat their old IDE with no effort yet spent learning it.)

Seriously, Microsoft and Google can't even do a competent UI on applications built for consumers. Their developer tools are terrible by comparison.

[MrGando]

Are you kidding me? Look, I've been developing Mac/iOS for a while now (7 years). Xcode is mostly a piece of garbage if you compare it with the robustness of Visual Studio. I actually envy the MSFT developer tools, specially VS.

Google is another story though.

[Fargren]

I've used XCode for hundreds of hours. It's very lacking in functionality, I'm not going to copy and paste my other comment.

Interface Builder is very nice, I will give it that. I did have it break on me once or twice(wouldn't let met add a particular kind of segue), and having to manually edit the generated XML file was a pain, but still, it is better than most similar things I've used.

[72deluxe]

What have you used instead? If you've used Visual Studio then it seems pretty bad to begin with. I used to use Codegear RAD Studio (C++ Builder) and that was OK until all the developers left and it became buggy, memory-hogging and generally bad.

XCode seems quite spartan compared to Visual Studio. VS will give you many panes left/right/bottom and a myriad of buttons to do things but xcode just gives you that pane on the left, and you will likely benefit from learning the cmd-1,2,3 etc. shortcuts to jump to the different pages of this "notebook". The other benefit if the quick navigation at the top, the useful "callers/callees" access from the "four squares" menu top left of the editing area. As someone else said, it has Instruments built straight in, the ability to monitor CPU/memory/disk and network and a much better thread stack view (xcode 5 was pretty bad with this I recall - you had to navigate using a popup menu).

You might get on differently with it if you're using different languages. I write C++ in it daily and I really enjoy it (clang is quick). The ability to do static code analysis and have it annotated in the editing window is really really really really great. Lack of refactoring with C++ is a bit sad but not a massive issue for me. Whenever I go back to using Visual Studio I find it to be clunky and there's too much on screen (popups, toolbars, etc.) but that's just me. Also, the glitching and artifacting when VS redraws is irritating (might just be a side effect of running in a VM for me), and the "stop build" takes too long thanks to the compiler running in a hidden window. I ought to upgrade to a more recent Visual Studio as I have to use VS2010 at work for now.

Compared to Eclipse and Android Studio, Xcode is good! I find Eclipse and Android Studio to be slow, and they typically break every upgrade. (AS is currently complaining about a modified ant.jar and refusing to upgrade... wasn't me who did that!)

Having said that xcode currently crashes once a day for me. Not sure if it's in the preprocessing/indexing phase as it falls over with large numbers of #defines and ~80k lines of C++.