How do I set the firstresponder?

Looks like you may have accidentally misspelled the method name didViewLoad instead of viewDidLoad. All you should need there (assuming your IBOutlet is connected in IB) is the following:

[textView becomeFirstResponder];

I know this is tagged as cocoa-touch but this is highly ranked in Google and I ran into trouble with using -becomeFirstResponder on OS X; it did nothing. From the NSResponder documentation,

Use the NSWindow makeFirstResponder: method, not this method, to make an object the first responder. Never invoke this method directly.

So on OS X use,

[[myView window] makeFirstResponder:myView];