But once I did it was magic.
The light came on when I sat down and wrote a Cocoa app with no nib files from scratch. Once you see what to put together programatically, you see what you're supposed to assemble in IB.
I'm continually amazed at what I can get done in no time at all.
Ask if you get stuck - I got a lot of help from friends at Apple (one of them works on IB) and I can get you answers from the source if you want them.
Otherwise, the dev lists are good.