iLife was very important to Steve, he dedicated a lot of time demoing the apps on stage. He was a huge fan of ripping out all the features of iMovie.
Same with iTunes (which has gotten a ton of criticism over the years), he was the one that kept cramming everything under the sun into it.
I don't know if he was as passionate about X Code, but he sure liked to brag about having the best development environment. Interface Builder in particular seems right out of Steve Jobs' brain (even if it sucks).
It does a great job of getting you from zero to an app, but it breaks down terribly once you try to do anything custom with it. The fact that it hides code from the developer drives me nuts.
Ooh I forgot about that feature. It does at least answer my big problem with IB: you execute code you didn't write and can't read. I'll have to give live rendering another look.
I won't start a religious war here, but IB is awesome in demos and less awesome in real world. Versioning alone is enough to make you go crazy (especially back in the .nib days!).
I understand both sides of the argument - it took me considerable time to wrap me head around IB and for the longest time I just assumed I simply wouldn't "get it".
Interested to how you do versioning on UI with or without IB though. Personally I just maintain branches until an agreed upon design is in place.
Same with iTunes (which has gotten a ton of criticism over the years), he was the one that kept cramming everything under the sun into it.
I don't know if he was as passionate about X Code, but he sure liked to brag about having the best development environment. Interface Builder in particular seems right out of Steve Jobs' brain (even if it sucks).
Here he is introducing X Code: https://youtu.be/Rh5spZrzu6c?t=59m3s