Doing Serial port programming on MAC 10.6

Dear All,
I'm new to MAC 10.6 and XCode development and need advice from you.
I have to develop a program to access a hardware system connected via serial port and do some real time communication with it. There are some requirements to display the data in graphical format such as graph and charts also.

1. XCode in MAC is a best option or any other better alternatives ?
2. What is your recommended language to work with, Object C, C++ or Java ( considering both serial port communication and UI development)
2. Any help to find some sample codes to access serial port ?

Thanks in Advance !!
Chinthaka

As hinted here, you'll need a serial adapter for USB, or a serial card for the towers may be an option.

If you are doing GUI development, then yes, use XCode, Interface Builder, and Objective-C. In other words, use the standard Apple tool set. Objective-C is a super set of standard C.

Serial code samples should be similar to any similar BSD Unix type system. Of course I would expect that your adapter will need the appropriate drivers installed first.