Building Cocoa Applications: A Step by Step Guide

Utilities

In addition to the applications found in /Developer/Applications, there are several useful developer tools in the /Applications/Utilities folder. These applications are bundled with the user system, but they can still help developers. The /Application/Utilities folder is shown in Figure 2-7. The icons in this folder are rather plain (look at your screen, not the screen shot in the book), indicating their utility status (compare them with the more colorful icons for the “fancy” applications in the /Developer/Applications folder).

Figure 2-7. The /Application/Utilities folder contains useful tools for developers

The Console displays information that other applications print on the system console. This should be familiar to the Unix-savvy. Many Mac OS X programs display error messages on the system console rather than writing them to a file. The Console application can also show you a stack-trace of a program that crashes. We suggest you keep this application handy when programming and testing.

The ProcessViewer graphically shows you all of the processes that are currently running on your computer. Its output is similar to that of the common Unix programs top and ps, which can be run in a Terminal window in Mac OS X. A screen shot of the user processes for the logged-in user (as opposed to the administrator processes) is shown in Figure 2-8.

Figure 2-8. ProcessViewer displaying ...