best GUI option for my simple needs?

I'm brand new to C++. I need to build an app on OSX Lion with xcode that has a very simple GUI. I'd like a fullscreen black window (no menu bar, scrolling, or resizing - just a black screen). In this window I'd like to have minimalist clickable buttons that are single color rectangles with text inside, in a custom layout. That's it. I'd prefer no other pre-designed GUI artifacts of any kind on screen.

As far as CPU usage, I'd like to find the most lightweight way of accomplishing this. Cocoa, wxWidgets? Is there a better option out there? Thanks for your help.

Cocoa, Objective-C, and the Apple documentation which includes building full screen apps.

You can use C++ to build GUI apps as I recall, but it's a hassle as the system is all about using Objective-C the non-C++ frame works.

wxWidgets will give you easy cross platform support if that's a concern for you. You could also look into Qt which is also a fairly comprehensive (and cross platform) toolkit.

Admittedly, the bit of programming I do is not C/C++/Obj-C so I have no idea how these toolkits perform with C++.

Xcode will do what you want. I'm not saying that it will be easy, but I regularly use Xcode as the GUI front end to Perl. If it does that, then it will certainly talk to C++. Actually, the calling mechanism of the Task object will probably allow you to call any foreign language, except maybe for Basic.

Your problem is that you will have to learn enough Objective-C to make the widgets/controls accept and post the data from your C++.

As to where you are going to get a tutorial or book on the subject of C++ under Xcode, I have no idea.

As vansmith said, wxWidgets or Qt will probably have a far lower learning hill to climb. My only problem with non-Apple supplied suites, is that they usually stop working after every major OSX upgrade, and you have to hunt down the fixes.