iOS 5 Gold Master ready for download

The iOS 5 Gold Master! Finally! Feels like we've been waiting all Summer and a bit of Autumn for this to happen -- of course, that's exactly how long it's been since WWDC.

The release candidate SDK is now available for download by paid devs at the iOS developer site.

As with the pre-RC betas, you'll also find all the other items that continue to be synchronously updated to support the beta. Sign in with your developer credentials to gain access to the updated SDK.

Now that the Gold Master has dropped, non-developers can look forward to the full version which will arrive on October 12. The update to iOS 5 will be free.

Please stay current with the GM's release notes. There are often final details that need sorting out. Let Beta 7's fauxbrickage serve as a motivational inspiration for why.

Installation alerts usually appear in a big yellow box on the main iOS dev page. Important update notices also appear on the developer forums. If you run into troubles installing updates, please check the dev site and forums first.

The gold master remains under the terms of Apple's NDA except for items announced by Apple at their event and on their website. For that reason, specific enhancements, APIs and features are not listed within this post. Once the firmware goes live, you'll see plenty of iOS 5 coverage here at TUAW.

Pre-release TUAW iOS 5 coverage -- researched and written by our non-NDA staffers -- is available here.

Happy developing everyone! Thanks, everyone who tipped us.