Apple Announcement Live Blog!
Well, what did we get? We’ll be posting a full wrap-up later with all the juicy details, but click through for the highlights as they become available!
First up, OS X Lion!
- OS X Lion’s Mission Control is going to be a great way to jump from app to app. Along with Launchpad, OS X is really becoming similar to iOS. (Which may prove to be both good and bad…)
- Photo Booth is seeing some really cool updates with facial tracking.
- The Mac App Store is destroying big box retailers in terms of software sales.
- Apps Autosave when you close them…Sort of a save state, making opening and closing apps much quicker, and more efficient, as you will pick up right where you left off.
- Document versions in iWork, meaning you’ll never have to recover a document from anywhere but where you want, even if you accidentally destroy a file.
- The Mac App Store is now even more tightly integrated, installing apps right to your Dock and Launchpad, just like they do in iOS.
- AirDrop is now official. It seems like its basically DropBox, or Box.net, but integrated into the OS. Basically an advanced flash drive that you can use to share files over the internet with yourself or others.
- A brand new Mail app is being introduced. New search features and (finally) legit conversation view for emails. Also laid out quite like Mail in iOS, even down to the multiple column views.
- Facetime is built in, so no, you won’t be paying $.99 for it from the App Store.
- Lion is only available from the App Store. No more purchasing CD’s or DVD’s to install, just click Install! (Should be a nice way for Apple to pad the number of downloads in the store!)
- Lion will cost $29 to upgrade. Available next month.
Now for iOS5!
- iOS is on over 200 million devices! (iPhones, iPads, iPod touches.)
- They’ve so intelligently pointed out that iOS notifications suck. Here we go!
- They’re calling it Notification Center.
- Brings actionable Notifications to a pull down bar from the top, as well as to your lock screen.
- You can swipe across certain notifications to act on them, as well as manage what apps throw what certain notifications up into the Notication Center.
- iOS now has full Twitter integration, including in Photos and Camera.
- Twitter can even update your Contacts with photos and info.
- Mobile Safari has been updated with Reader, making articles and blogs in your browser format to a much more readable format.
- The new Reading List enables you to save online articles that you don’t have to read, enabling you to easily come back to them later. No more junking up bookmarks, or using external services.
- Safari has tabs! Finally!
- iOS now has a to-do app integrated into the system. Not amazing, but not bad to have available I suppose.
- A lockscreen shortcut has been added to go straight to the camera. That’s pretty awesome. Especially considering the iPhone is the second most popular camera on Flickr.
- Split keyboard on the iPad for portrait mode. Another finally!
- Wireless syncing! You can now use your iDevice PC free! For all of Apple’s talk about the post-PC era, it looks like they might finally be making good!
- You open your new device, turn it on, and you’re good to go!
- Updates will also now be provided over the air to all devices, and to minimize the download, you’ll be downloading only the changes to the OS, not the entire OS itself.
- Next up is Game Center…Are they finally going to make it relevant?
- Answer: Maybe? They’ve done they’re best, the question will be if they missed the window of opportunity…
- Friends of Friends, Achievement Scores, Game Discovery and Game Downloads all within Game Center.
- Turn based games are a go – hello Words with Friends!
- Aaaaaaand hello iMessage!
- Works between all iOS devices…iPhones chatting with iPads chatting with iPods. Pretty cool.
- Just like in BBM, you can see if people have read your messages, and if they’re actively typing back to you.
- Send photos, videos and messages or 3G or Wifi.
- AirPlay Mirroring and Wifi sync/backup, as well as a new Music app are all coming to the iPad.
- Your iPad will be backed up everyday, without having to plug in for a half an hour!
- Oh baby…Not going to be available until the fall. Womp womp.
- And now, Steve is back out, to talk about…
iCloud!
- “We’ve been working on this for some time. About 10 years ago, we had one of our most important insights. We thought the PC would be the hub for your digital life. Where you put your photos, your video, your music.”
- Yep, looks like this will be what we talked about earlier. Everything you own, syncing automatically across all your devices, to your own personal cloud. Let’s hear more!
- Contacts, Calendar and Mail were the flagship products in MobileMe. (And they failed miserably.) Apparently though, Apple has learned alot, and rewritten those ideas (and apps!) completely for iCloud.
- Wow, this is cool. Anything you buy from an Apple Store, including App Store, iBooks, etc. can be downloaded seperately on each iDevice. No extra charge, no monthly fee. Question is…What hardware? And how much??
- iCloud automatically backs up all your most important stuff (we’re assuming this is at least somewhat customizable) once daily.
- Here come “the most inventive” parts of iCloud…
- With Documents, any iDevice you have Pages on will automatically upload the latest version of your doc to your personal iCloud, and open the latest version as well. This is basically your own personal Google Docs. Kind of awesome, although I do want to see some sharing, etc…
- Also, while many users will appreciate not having to deal with a file system, it makes me a little nervous, and I know I can’t be the only one.
- Photo Stream will do the same thing with your Photos apps. Take pictures on your iPhone during your vacation, show them off on your iPad when you get home, and you’ll never have to move the pictures over, or waste your iPad’s space with them.
- *You KNOW we’re going to have music storage in the iCloud. Just a matter of time now…
- Wow, Photo Stream will be on Apple TV, and will even work with the Pictures folder in Windows.
- Looks like Photos are only stored in your Stream for up to 30 days? Then they’re…Gone? Good thing they were backed up wirelessly. But seriously where do they go?
- And here it is. Your iTunes library is now in your iCloud!
- You can set iTunes on your devices to automatically download the music you purhcase for offline listening.
- iTunes will store the music at 256kbps AAC – pretty decent audio quality for digital music.
- iCloud will run on Apple servers and be completely free! No hardware purchase necessary, just an iCloud account.
- This new iTunes version will be available today.
- One more thing…
- iTunes and iCloud are made to work with music purchased in the iTunes store, but everyone has music they ripped themselves, either from CD’s or “other ways”…
- Apple is offering three ways to get this music into your iCloud. First, Sync your devices over Wifi or cable. Two, you can repurchase them on iTunes. Third, you can use Music Match.
- Music Match by Apple will scan your library and see if they have matching music in iTunes, then you get access to that music in the cloud. It will also upgrade all these songs to 256kbps AAC. Music Match will cost a flat fee of $24.99.
And that’s it! Keep an eye out for our full rundown later tonight, and let us know what you think of the announcements in the comments!
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