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Apple Releases Xcode 4 GM

Apple just released a GM seed of Xcode 4. It’s available now in the iOS and Mac dev centers. The release of the GM seed means the final version of Xcode 4 is nearing completion and should be available soon.

Xcode 4 is a major new version of Apple’s development suite which sports lots of new features and a new single-windowed UI. The first version of Xcode 4 preview was released during the WWDC in June, the second build was seeded in late July, Preview 3 was made available on September 2, Preview 4 was released in October. The latest developer seed, preview 6, was released on January 10.

From the release notes:

Xcode 4 GM seed can now be used to submit iOS and Mac apps to the App Store.

Xcode 4 GM seed includes the iOS SDK 4.2 and Mac OS X SDK 10.6.

The ReadMe file of the GM seed also comes with an interesting notice:

Xcode 4 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or later.

Which we’re sure is just a mistake on the release notes.

Update: it appears that Apple has pulled the GM seed from the developer center, which shows Preview 6 again. Perhaps a bug was found at the last minute, so we guess it should be back shortly.

Update #2: the GM seed is available again in the Dev Center. The OS X 10.7 mention has been removed:

Xcode 4 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later. See the installation notes below for additional information.

Don’t Have an iPad? Want All The Daily Articles In One Place? Here You Go

The Daily is a cool experiment, although the app needs some serious optimizations in our opinion. Still, the content seems to be pretty nice, and it’s indeed being updated “daily” with new articles, covers and videos. As you may have noticed, most of the articles from The Daily app are also shared by News Corp’s team on the web, but there’s no index for all these links. Either you follow @thedaily on Twitter to read every single link, or you can’t just head over the website and browse a complete archive of stories. The availability of backlog issues was a also a subject discussed by News Corp and journalists at the official announcement of the app yesterday and it looks like, at least for now, The Daily has no plans to create a public archive of all their stories on the web.

But, there is a solution. The unofficial “The Daily: Indexed” archive by Andy Baio provides a single place to find all the articles from The Daily that have already been shared on the web. The blog aggregates all the links, organizes them by day and even offers a preview of each day’s cover. It’s an interesting (and useful) experiment that also plays very well with Instapaper and Read It Later, if you like the content of The Daily but don’t want to download the app.

Check out The Daily Indexed here. [via Daring Fireball]

Shuttie: Set A Timer For Your Mac To Shutdown Or Sleep

Shuttie, a $0.99 app available in the Mac App Store, is the kind of utility I’ve been looking for these days, as I’m tweaking my workflow to include Time Machine backups through Dolly Drive, and hard drive clones with SuperDuper. My problem with backups is that I want them to run at night, but I’d like my MacBook to sleep once backup sessions are completed. And even though I know it’s possible to trigger AppleScripts to put a Mac to sleep with iCal, or tweak the System Preferences to enable display and computer sleep, Shuttie is a simple app with a nice design that offers more options, and it’s very easy to use.

Shuttie lets you set a timer for shutdown, sleep, restart and logout. Set a time (hours and minutes are supported), activate the timer and forget it. Once the countdown is up, Shuttie will perform the function you assigned it. This is quite handy for me, as I can let Dolly Drive and SuperDuper do their backups, then put the computer to sleep after 3 hours, when the backups are completed. This way, I don’t have to leave my MacBook running all night.

Shuttie provides a nice interface for things that can be accomplished manually in other ways, and it works very well. If you don’t want to mess with System Preferences and AppleScripts, give it a try.

iAds Twice as Effective as TV Says Apple, Campbell’s

A Nielsen study shows iPhone users are paying attention, while TV views – eh, not so much. iAds started around 7 months ago on our iDevices and now there are effectiveness studies showing up, this one from Campbell’s (the soup maker).

People exposed to one of Campbell’s iAds were more than twice as likely to recall it than those who had seen a Campbell’s TV ad. This five-week Nielsen study showed that consumers who saw an iAd remembered Campbell’s brand five times more often than TV ad respondents and the ad’s  message three times more often. iAd respondents were four times as likely to to purchase Campbell’s than the TV viewers. Users also liked the ad five times more than the TV commercial. Read more

Rumor: Apple Planning iPad 2 & iOS 4.3 Event Next Week

According to website MacNotes.de, which previously reported the next-generation iPad is set to come out in the first weeks of April, Apple is planning a media event next week to discuss the new features in iOS 4.3 and provide a preview of the iPad 2.

A release date between 2nd and 9th April seems quite likely, sources - not only ours - pointed to a release in early April. The only question is: When will the iPad 2 be presented? One manufacturer of iPad accessoires now told us Apple is planning on holding an event next week.

Our guess is Apple will present the iPad 2 as a “One more thing” during a special iOS 4.3 developer event next week. iOS 4.3 is still a beta, Apple released the third beta on Tuesday. It still contains critical bugs, but might be released soon as soon as all the bugs are fixed.

The rumor follows a series of reports surfaced last night that hint at the release of iOS 4.3 in two weeks. iOS 4.3 is currently being tested with developers and has reached the beta 3 status, which may lead to a release of a GM seed next week. If the rumors are to be believed, in two weeks (and after the release of the Verizon iPhone on February 10th) Apple could roll out iOS 4.3 for all iOS devices, which, among other features, will introduce the Personal Hotspot functionality on the iPhone. The timing is also somewhat curious: the long anticipated iPad newspaper The Daily offers a free trial of two weeks, sponsored by Verizon Wireless. The Verizon iPhone will come out on Feb. 10 with the Personal Hotspot feature as an exclusive; AT&T iPhones will get Personal Hotspot only with iOS 4.3. Looking at the numbers and hints, the two-week timeframe seems likely.

It is unclear, however, why would Apple hold an event to announce both a new version of iOS and the iPad 2 as “one more thing”. Usually, new devices are always given a dedicated media event, not a brief preview during an iOS-related event. [via]

Apple’s Data Center, Tailor-Made

It’s not terribly difficult to drive by Apple’s data center in Maiden, North Carolina, to witness Apple has something rather big planned, especially when you start seeing the plans for a parallel building in the unassuming clearing. A single Apple data center has over 447,142 square feet available for sever racks, power, and cooling whose purpose remains a mystery. Details continue to pour in from local news outlets, however, meaning Carolinians get to be on the front lines of witnessing some serious tech installments when leaked.

“This data center has truly changed the playing field in terms of size, efficiency, and engineering, and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to bring our expertise to the table to make it a reality,” said Todd Schneider, Senior Product Manager at Electrorack.

Instor and Electrostak have been creating a custom architecture for Apple, hired by Holder Construction to provide power, cooling, and custom mounting equipment needed to host a slew of unnamed, third party equipment. The solutions deployed at the Apple data center are noted to be unique in design, though I read that as: “There’s a crap load of pretty braided white cable attached to endless rows of aluminum racks.” Maybe I’m breathing too much of the Apple mantra, but I am inherently interested in Apple’s storage solution vs. a company like Google who sports systems are generally cheap, disposable, and exist in large quantities to prevent downtime. In jest, I’m assuming Apple’s data center is just a field of Mac Minis until I hear otherwise.

[via Data Center Knowledge]

New York Times Giving iPhones To Reporters

It’s no secret that the camera of the iPhone 4 has dramatically increased the quality of photos and videos shot with the device. The New York Times noticed this as well, and has decided to provide iPhone 4s to reporters for news video gathering. The reporters will be able to record videos and upload them to the NYT’s servers using Aspera’s file transfer tools.

Speaking to Beet.TV, Editorial Director for Video and Television Ann Derry called the Apple iPhone 4 a “game changer” for mobile video shooting and uploading, confirming that reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin used the device during Davos. Videos have become prominent in the paper’s website homepage, and the adoption of the iPhone as a portable camera will extend the staffers’ capabilities of recording videos in almost real-time, as events happen.

Check out the interview below. Read more

Thermo: “Hot” Weather App by Robocat, Free

Robocat is a quite popular iOS development studio that released a weather app for the iPhone we have covered a few times on MacStories: Outside. Their latest effort in mobile weather software, Thermo, takes from where Outside left off with beautiful graphics and intuitive interface but adds a serious level of simplicity stripping away all the additional features found in the former app. Thermo is, in fact, free and aimed at letting you see the temperature of where you live.

The app comes with delicious interface design, indeed. In pure Robocat style, Thermo is really, really “hot”. You can select temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit degrees, check on today’s temperature and the one from the day before. Tap on the thermometer to refresh. That’s it. In the settings, you can disable auto-locate, go ad-free ($0.99) and select your unit of choice.

Thermo is a simple weather app with a pretty design. Go download it here.