Yeah well this is kinda shorter, and works on all platforms:
SDL_Surface* screen = NULL;
//Set up screen
screen = SDL_SetVideoMode( 640, 480, 32, SDL_SWSURFACE );
Or maybe not on all, but on a nice amount of platforms:
SDL supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, SymbianOS, and OS/2, but these are not officially supported.