Well, I had a little look into xCode and programming on a Mac, and it all seems retarded. Not to mention that the GUI of the Mac's main coding program is awful, far worse than Microsoft visual studio for example, with too many retarded floating windows that it's impossible to keep track of what's going on, if you have multiple projects open there is no easy way to distinguish between them, and one accidental drag and drop can ruin your project. Seriously, when you get to complicated structures, you don't want to be able to drag and drop anything to anything. At least a "You have chosen to drag essential file 'x' into useless directory 'y', which will break your application. Are you sure you weren't trying to just click on file 'x' instead?
All of the above spells retarded to me.
While I'm no expert, I've programmed some with Xcode (have coded a webkit-based browser and a couple other random doodads), and honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. Xcode only has a single floating palette, and it's only open when the user invokes it. Each project is contained in a single window.

Now if you're speaking about Interface Builder, which is separate from Xcode and does nothing but what its name implies, yes it does have a few more palettes. However, to prevent confusion between windows you're working on between separate projects, windows that belong to projects other than the currently active one are dimmed.

As for drag and drop in the file browser "ruining" projects, umm, I don't believe I've
ever had that problem happen in my 12+ years of using Macs (which even includes pre-OS X classic Mac OS), despite the fact that I often multitask like a madman. A single glance at the file browser window's path bar tells me exactly where the directory is, and even if a misdrag DOES occur, whoopitee-freakin'-do - Hit command-z (undo) in the Finder (Mac file browser), and that fatal relocation is completely undone. Also, maybe I'm just unnaturally good with my mouse cursor, but accidentally dragging when I intend to click is a rarity - once a month or less.
I tried MS Visual Studio several times, and honestly, I found it confusing and not straightforward at all. Perhaps that's a side-effect of using Xcode, but that's how I feel about it. Xcode/Interface Builder is simple - Create your project, design the interface, write the code, and compile.