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Apple Seeds Xcode 4 Preview 5 To Developers

A few minutes ago Apple released the fifth developer preview of Xcode 4 to developers. It’s available in the Mac and iOS Dev Center. The release comes a month after the fourth developer preview.

This is a pre-release version of Xcode 4, a major new release of Xcode for both Mac and iOS development. This release requires Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and includes the iOS SDK 4.2 GM seed, to develop apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

As for this very specific build, new features for tabs, editors panes and alerts are introduced:

This preview introduces new features and enhancements for tabs, editor panes, and alerts.  These features are designed to scale the single window interface of Xcode 4 to more effectively use available screen real estate, from the 11” MacBook Air, up to Macs equipped with multiple monitors.  Please experiment with these new features to see how Xcode 4 can speed up your daily development tasks.

Hide and Disable Ping in iTunes 10.1

iTunes 10.1, launched a few hours ago, introduced two new options to hide Ping from the sidebar and disable it completely using parental controls. First, check out our previous post detailing how you can hide Ping’s dropdown menu using a Terminal hack.

If you want to hide the Ping element from iTunes’ sidebar, open iTunes’ preferences, hit the General tab and deselect Ping in the “Show” section. That will remove it from the sidebar.

Read more

Microsoft Targets Mac’s Lack Of Blu-Ray Support In Latest Windows 7 Ad

I haven’t really ever felt like needing to watch a Blu-Ray movie on my MacBook Pro, but apparently the folks down at Redmond think it’s worth producing an ad focused on it. In order to promote entertainment on Windows 7 machines versus Mac machines through the support of Blu-Ray disks, the video we’re referring to shows a Mac and a PC on flight, watching Avatar on the PC’s screen.

It’s nice and well-realized, overall. Check it out below. Read more

Apple Releases New iOS 4.2 GM Build For iPad (8C134b)

As we previously reported, Apple just released a second GM build of iOS 4.2 for iPad to deal with the WiFi issues. It’s available in the iOS Developer Center. Build number is 8C134b, and it’s a 551MB download.

This build is meant to address the WiFi issues experienced by several users. From what we’re hearing, Apple wants to get testing done as fast as possible – iOS 4.2 might drop next week.

Apple didn’t change the date of the original GM build, you’ll still see “November 1” on the dev center. The iPad build, however, is new.

Apple Releases iTunes 10.1, Brings iOS 4.2 Support

iTunes 10.1 just went live on Apple’s website. iTunes 10.1 is required to update your devices to iOS 4.2. You can download it here.

iTunes 10.1 introduces overall performance and stability improvements, sync support for iOS 4.2, video streaming to the Apple TV. After Mac OS X 10.6.5 and iTunes 10.1, iOS 4.2 is the next step.

Hacker Runs Microsoft’s Kinect on OS X

A few days after Microsoft released Kinect (and years later Apple’s interest in the device), a motion-based game controller for the Xbox 360 console, a group of hackers managed to modify the device’s settings, hack it and let it run on Windows 7.

Microsoft of course isn’t interested in this kind of hacks and will never support such efforts – also because there’s not really much you can do with Kinect on computers. It “runs” and  displays the images it captures from the camera, but you can’t do much after all. Read more

Apple and Oracle Announce OpenJDK for OS X, Java Developers Rejoice

When developers noticed Apple was deprecating Java on OS X, there was quite a mess on the internet. Today, Apple announced that is joining Oracle to bring the OpenJDK project on the Mac in order to maintain Java.

Apple will contribute most of the key components, “including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries and a networking stack”.

With OpenJDK, Apple’s Java technology will be available open source for developers to contribute to. Press release embedded below. Read more

iOS 4.2 “Delayed” Due to iPad WiFi Issues, New GM Build Coming [Updated]

Two days ago we reported Mac OS X 10.6.5 and iTunes 10.1 were set to come out on Wednesday, with iOS 4.2 for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to follow on Friday Nov. 12th – tomorrow. Mac OS X 10.6.5 indeed came out, without AirPrint functionality for shared printers as previously reported as well. iTunes 10.1 didn’t come out.

Basing on the information we got from a reliable source, it appears that iOS 4.2 won’t come out on Nov. 12th due to last-minute WiFi connection issues experienced by many users running the GM build on the iPad. The issues have been widely documented on MacRumors forums (here and here), Twitter and Apple’s own discussion boards, both by users and developers. You can check out a video of the bug in action below. Read more

You Can Buy An Original Apple-1 For $200K

The Apple-1 is the computer that started it all. Sold by Steve Jobs and the Woz in Jobs’ garage, it was the first pre-assembled computer to come with 8k or RAM, but without a keyboard or monitor. Back then, the two folks that started Apple Computer used to sell it at $666.66, and a very few ones have survived today.

Now, you can buy one if you want. Only at $200K. Read more