Tuesday, June 7, 2011

WWDC Keynote Roundup

This week is Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and yesterday's keynote featured previews of the upcoming OSX Lion and iOS 5 updates and the new iCloud service.  After the jump is a summary of what you can expect to see in these fall releases.

MacOS 10.7 Lion
  • 250 new features
  • $29 update via Mac app store (no disk!), don't need to buy multiple copies
  • 3000 new APIs for developers
  • Multitouch gesture support
  • Expose and Spaces combined, easier transitions between full screen apps
  • Automatic save, can browse through different versions and copy/paste between them
  • Air Drop - p2p drag-and-drop transfer via wifi
iOS 5
  • 200+ new features
  • Notification Center that aggregates notifications (missed calls, app alerts, updates, etc.); no more popups
  • Newstand for subscriptions
  • Twitter integration with Photos, Contacts, Safari, YouTube, Maps
  • Safari Reader - reformatting mobile web pages for increased readability
  • Reading List - tag articles, websites, etc. for later reading and sync to all devices
  • Reminders - can save a locations
  • Launch Camera from lock screen
  • Take a picture with the volume up button
  • On-device editing (crop, rotate, red-eye removal, enhancement)
  • Rich Text Formatting in Mail 
  • iPad split keyboard option
  • Wireless syncing, activation on device (no iTunes necessary!)
  • Over-the-air delta updates (upgrades the parts of the OS that have changed instead of the whole thing)
  • Messaging between all iOS devices - text, photos, ids, contacts - over 3g and wifi
  • Available for 3GS and newer devices
iCloud
  • Stores all content and pushes to devices
  • Automatic daily backups - Camera, music, device settings, apps, Pages, Numbers, Keynote
  • Calendar and Contact changes pushed to cloud, all other devices updated
  • No more Mobile Me; free Contact, Calendar, Mail, apps, and iBook sync
  • Can view entire iTunes purchase history and redownload previous purchases
  • Can sync up to ten devices
  • iTunes Match - downloads any music to iTunes (even if not purchased through the store), upgrades music to 256k AAC DRM free, $24.99/year
  • Beta version now available in the iTunes 10.3 update
Looks like it's going to be a really exciting set of releases!

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