Yesterday Apple released the iOS 5 GM to developers. This is the final iOS 5 “beta” version to come out before the software’s public launch, and in most cases the GM is identical to what gets publicly seeded.
In classic GM fashion, you don’t actually have to be a registered developer to install the iOS 5 GM. That doesn’t mean that it’s not still discouraged, it just means that Apple doesn’t check developer UDIDs when installing the iOS 5 GM…
You do need iTunes beta 9 (or beta 7) to install the iOS 5 GM on your computer. The GM is not available as an over-the-air update for users already on a previous iOS 5 beta.
Here’s the deal: we could have given you all of the links to download this stuff and install the GM last night. We didn’t do that because we want to honor Apple’s developer agreement, and iOS 5 is dropping for everyone exactly one week from today.
We can all wait one more week for the final, completely stable version of iOS 5. If you feel like you can’t wait, then you’ve likely already installed the GM yourself.