My mom was kind enough to let me borrow her MacBook this weekend so I could get a feel for OS X and maybe tackle some HelloWorld initiatives in Cocoa.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to fire it up until this morning due to two days of BBQs (my stomach is not complaining).  I hopped out to Dunkin Donuts, got my large cream & sugar, and returned home eager to start coding in this new, strange world.

Alas, my first task was to find XCode, the free IDE from Apple for developing anything Mac-related.  My Mac-savy uncle told me that XCode comes with OS X so there’s nothing to buy.  True words, though, after combing through the Finder list, I was unsuccessful in finding the darn thing.  Then it dawned on me that XCode may not be a default installation option and after a quick trip to the Apple Developer Center (ADC) I found out why.  XCode is a weighty 1+ GB depending on the version.

Version.  Hmm … the download page for XCode 3.1 mentioned that its built for “Intel or PowerPC Mac running Leopard.”  Well nuts.  Even being a Mac newbie, I remember that my Mom told me that her MacBook is on Tiger and not running Leopard yet because she’s in the middle of an iMovie/iPhoto project and heard there were changes moving from 10.4 to 10.5 in that software.  Thwarted in my first attempt, I would not be denied.  I quickly googled for “XCode on 10.4″ and learned that the ideal version of XCode for Tiger is 2.4.  Googling for XCode 2.4 came up with a couple links to XCode (I ignored these, the URIs seemed generic and they just pointed to the latest XCode downloads) and a legacy link to the XCode 2.4 download.  Huzzah!

I downloaded the disk image (entertained by the DMG extension; pronouncing it as “damage”) and when its done I’ll install and finally get to work!  I only have an hour this morning, so I’ll be installing and starting my development poking and prodding later today.