Today Apple's World Wide Developer Conference Keynote happened after much anticipation
OS X Lion 10.7
Apple started the Keynote by having Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi up on stage to talk about Lion. Schiller said that there are now over 54 million active Mac users in the world. The Mac has outgrown the PC industry every quarter for the past 5 years. The PC market shrank year over year by 1% while the Mac grew 28%. Mac sales are 73% notebooks and 27% desktops.
Out of the 250 new features coming to the Mac in OS X 10.7 Lion, they covered 10 new features.
1. Multitouch gestures (on a notebook trackpad or Magic trackpad for desktops) - fully integrated across the system, especially with Launchpad and Mission Control. I have used the new Multitouch gestures on Lion for some months now as a part of the developer preview. Unlike previous gestures, I can attest that these feel natural to use and I like them allot.
2. Full screen apps - They become their own spaces when you maximize them. In a full scree maximized Photobooth, they demoed the new facial tracking special effects in Photo Booth.
3. Mission Control - evolutionary iteration of Spaces, Dashboard & Expose. It will take you a week to get used to, but if you are a heavy Expose or Spaces user like myself, you will GREATLY appreciate Mission Control. It is indispensable if you have 5 or more apps open with a dozen windows. Think Expose and Spaces melded together on steroids.
4. Mac App Store - Nothing new here except to say that the Mac App Store is now the #1 place on the web for buying software. More so than Best Buy, Walmart and Office Depot.
5. Launchpad - Bringing the springboard layout of app icons that users are used to on their iPhones and iPads to the desktop. You can organize apps into folders just like on your iOS devices. You can also uninstall these apps in this same way.
6. Resume - Applications pick up where you left off the last time you closed them. This is a system-wide feature that works across all apps. Resume does this by using the new feature...
7. Auto Save - Auto Save does just what you think it does. It automatically saves documents you're working on as you work on them. It does this in the background without you having to do anything. The name of your document is now a menu. Click on it and you can revert to the last opened version to get back to where you were. Which brings us to...
8. Versions - This is a version control system that allows the user to revert back to old versions of a file in the Auto Save timeline. Auto Save saves all these versions of your document as you're working. You can also take manual snapshots if you so choose. It is very efficient, storing only the differences. If you share a file, it only sends the current version. There is a menu item called "Browse All Versions" which accesses a Time Machine-like interface, showing you all your versions stretching back into space. All of this is done live; you can make any version change to the current one, even copy & pasting between them.
9. AirDrop - A peer to peer file sharing utility. Works on a local network and allows you to see all users in your vicinity. Drag and drop interface to drop a file on the icon of a user. The user on the other end is prompted to accept or decline the file. The file is sent to the user's Download folder. Works via auto discovery with no setup. Transfers are fully encrypted.
10. Updated Mail app - New two or three column view (user preference). It looks a lot like iOS Mail on the iPad (without the Popover, thank god). Very powerful search suggestions which benefits users with a lot of mail. Conversation view: message threads, seeing all the indents with color coding, attachments, etc. It looks nice and I think a much needed improvement over the old Mail app.
Lion will have over 3000 new APIs for developers. Versions, push notifications, gesture tracking, etc. Lion will be available by the Mac App Store only for $29 in July. A updated Developer Preview will be made available today for developers.
iOS 5
After Craig and Phil wrap up the Lion news, Scot Forstall takes the stage to talk about iOS.
He starts off with the usual stats briefing. To date, Apple has sold over 200 million iOS devices. They've sold 25 million iPads in the first 14 months (the previous iPad number was 19.4 million, so they've sold 5 million iPads in the last 3 months). The iTunes store has sold more than 15 billion songs. The iBookstore has sold over 130 million books There are 425,000 apps on the app store with over 90,000 of them specifically made for the iPad. Apple has paid out more the $2.5 billion to developers as part of their profit share. The iTunes store had more than 225 million accounts with credit cards tied to them.
Forstall then overviews iOS 5. iOS 5 has over 200 new features and Scott covered 10 in the keynote.
1. Notifications Center - A single place which combines all your notifications. You can get to it at any time from anywhere, just by swiping your finger down from the menu on the top. A nice little screen comes down showing things like missed calls, voicemails, text messages, push notifications, etc. Notifications no longer interrupt you.
2. Newsstand - A single place in the App Store that combines all newspapers and magazines. Automatically downloads new issues in the background.
3. Twitter - Single sign-on. Now when you go to Settings app you can enter your username and password, and you're configured for Twitter. You no longer need to login for every app. Twitter is integrated into the Camera and Photo apps. You can take a picture, tap and action button and Tweet it. You can also tweet artciles & Web sites from Safari. Videos from youtube, and business/locations from Maps. It integrates with Contacts. You can use Twitter to automatically update Photos in your contact list and even the @username.
4. Safari - Adding an iOS version of Safari Reader which made it to Safari last year. Basically Apple's version of Readability which strips down a webpage to make it easier to read. This comes with a Reading List which syncs with Safari on your Mac and Windows. It works similarly to Instapaper. Fully tabbed Browsing on the iPad.
5. Reminders - Basically a to do list type feature that allows you to keep multiple lists, dates, locations, it allows you to setup reminders based on your arriving or leaving from a location. Searchable. Syncs with iCal via CalDav and Outlook on Windows. Out of all of this, that was the most WOW feature for me: using geolocation to tell you to do something when you leave somewhere.
6. Camera - They're adding a shortcut on the lock screen. Double click on the home button to bring it up and then you go directly to the camera. You can use the volume-up button to take a picture (finally!). Gridlines to use the rule of thirds to compose your photos, pinch to zoom within the camera for digital zoom, and you can now specify an auto-focus/auto-exposure lock and then move it around without losing that. Built-in editing of photos: crop, rotate, automatic red-eye reduction, one-click enchange (from iPhoto).
7. Mail - Adding Rich Text Formatting, indentation, dragging addresses between fields, flagging support. Full-text searching, including messages back on a server for iMac/Exchange. Swipe-gesture to inbox on iPad in portait mode. More enterprise support including S/MIME, certification for encryption.
8. PC Free - Users no longer need to own a computer to go into a store, buy an iPad, and take it home and use it (or an iPhone for that matter). You can setup and activate your device right on the device. Software updates over the air, delta-updates (basically smart-updating of just the differences in the software, not having to download the entire image over - should make for faster updates).
9. Game Center - They're adding profiles with photos for users. Compare your stats with your friends using achievement points, see friends of friends, and recommended friends & games. Added support for turn-based games within the OS.
10. iMessage - That sound you hear is RIM dying and the cellphone carriers having a conniption as their SMS sales plans have the rug pulled out from under them. Basically Apple's version of Blackberry messenger. iMessage will allow users to see delivery receipts, read receipts, typing indication. iMessages are pushed to all devices. Start up a conversation on your iPad and continue it on your iPhone. Everything is encrypted. Bye bye SMS messages. This is huge.
Two other huge features he mentioned at the end are iPad mirroring to the Apple TV wirelessly and wireless syncing to iTunes over Wifi. No longer need to dock your iPad or iPhone to your computer to sync. This is huge.
iOS 5 developer preview available to all developers today.
iOS 5 will ship to all customers this fall. Probably with the iPhone 5 release. Will be available on iPhone 3GS, 4, iPad, iPad 2, and third and fourth generation iPod Touches.
At this point in the keynote, Scott Forstall wraps up and Steve Jobs came back on stage to talk about iCloud.
iCloud
iCloud will be a way to sync all of your devices together. From the desktop to mobile. iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly sends it to all your devices. It is completely integrated with your apps. Steve said, "It just works".
Steve then trashes MobileMe, "Why should I believe Apple, they're the ones who brought me MobileMe?".
MobileMe used to be mainly Contacts, Calendars (and Calendar sharing), & Mail. As of today, MobileMe ceases to exist and is no longer $99, but is now free.
The new apps their adding to this suite are App Store,
* App Store - Now allows you to see your purchases across all devices, with a purchase history (similar to the Mac App Store).
* Books - Syncs your read states amongst your iBooks across all devices.
* Wireless Backup - Once daily it snapshots the system to iCloud. Daily backups to iCloud over Wifi. Backs up music, apps, books, camera roll, device settings, and app data.
* Documents - Syncs documents between Pages, Numbers and Keynote across all your devices. APIs for developers to use with their apps too.
* Photos Stream - Syncs your photo camera roll across all devices. Take a photo with your iPhone and it is available to view on your iPad. Also built-in to Apple TV. Stores the last 1000 photos. If you want to keep one permanently, just move it into an album.
* iTunes in the Cloud - All music purchases and synced and made available on all devices. Now works with 10 devices, not just 5.
5GB of free storage for Mail, Documents, and Backup. It's even more than it sounds like, because it doesn't count against purchased music, apps and books. They also don't count Photo Stream. The developer beta will be out today. End users will get the iTunes in the Cloud as an iOS 4.3 beta and everyone can run it on existing iPhone 4s.
iCloud is free. It will ship this fall with iOS 5 this fall.
One More Thing... iTunes Match.
Jobs then broke the 'One More Thing' news: iTunes Match.
It scans non-iTunes purchased music and matches it up with songs in the Store. It gives that music the same benefits as music purchased from iTunes. Takes just minutes, not weeks. No file uploads - just verified the music fingerprint. You upload only songs Apple can't identify. It upgrades songs to 256kbps AAC DRM-free. It costs $25 a year. Jobs, "If you have 5000 songs, Amazon Cloud charges $50. We're one flat $25 even for 20,000 songs".
That's it. Overall, lots of huge announcements. And thank god none of it has anything to do with a Time Capsule.
Update: Apple now has the product pages for these products up.
iCloud
iOS 5
Lion In particular, this page contains a comprehensive list of 250+ features coming in Lion.
