is
Apple Computer 's
IDE for developing software and ships free with
Mac OS X . First introduced on
October 24 ,
2003 along with the release of
Mac OS X V10.3 , it was developed from and superseded Apple's earlier IDE, '''Project Builder''', which was inherited from
NeXT .
Xcode works hand in hand with
Interface Builder (also inherited from
NeXT ), a graphical tool used to create user interfaces.
Xcode includes
{Link without Title} .
Among the highly touted features in Xcode is the technology to distribute the building of source code using
Bonjour over multiple computers.
The release of Xcode 2.1 in
June 2005 was significant in giving developers the tools to create
Universal Binaries which allow
Mac OS X software to run on both
PowerPC and
Intel -based (
''x''86 ) architectures. The release also integrated Apple's
WebObjects tools and frameworks for building Java web applications and web services (previously sold as a separate $699 product).
