Xcode 3 crashed on me a handful of times in a couple years. But in the past three days of really using Xcode 4, it has crashed once per day. New software always has issues, but the same stability woes were there in the Xcode 4 beta, so I was sure hoping for an improvement in the final release.

Single Window Isn't Always Better

There are elements of the new UI that are awesome. Having a tab for an implementation file and another for its corresponding Interface Builder file is a thing of beauty. Some things do work better as a single window, but Apple stuck with this design paradigm to such an extreme that there ends up being an almost comical number of side bars (within side bars, within side bars). Having Interface Builder fully integrated into Xcode is pretty cool, but whereas the IB of old had its own menu bar items and key commands, they are now all tucked away within Xcode's sea of sidebars- take a look at the screenshot for an unholy mess of a UI.

I usually give Apple the benefit of the doubt- I'm still getting used to Xcode 4, which is why I didn't mention any of my frustrations having to do with locating features I was so used to in Xcode 3. There are also a lot of visual bells and whistles that I imagine would be pretty slick on a faster machine. A quick and compelling performance update from the Apple team would really help things but until then I'm glad Apple Developer Connection still offers an Xcode 3 download...

Mike Keller is GeekTech's resident iOS developer nerd. Catch Diary of a Developer every Tuesday here at PCWorld's GeekTech blog.