WWDC 2011

So, every year, all Apple fans (and other tech enthusiasts) like me would sit and wait and listen to Apple and see what they've done this past year. WWDC happened earlier today and I have to say I was quite excited about it. I'm currently watching the video that's available here. Big cheers for Mr. Steve Jobs who was the first to take the stage. (Please don't ever leave us, Mr. Jobs! Gosh, he's lost A LOT of weight.)

Today they talked about OSX Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud.

1. Lion (coming in July, $29.99)
• Multi-Touch Gestures
• No more scroll bars! (death of the mouse?)
• Very iOS-like scrolling
• Full screen applications
• Swipe to go back to desktop and other full screen applications
• Mission Control
• Unified Dashboard, Exposé and Spaces
• Easy to create new Spaces, switch between applications, etc.
• Mac App Store
• Launchpad
• Like icons on iOS devices
• Launches applications from anywhere in the system
• Resume
• Brings you right where you were when you quit when you launch an application
• Works system wide so it works when you shut down too! (all spaces, applications running, everything will be there like before)
• Auto Save
• Automatically save documents in the background
• Title bar or name of document is now a menu
• Versions
• Using auto save, automatically save every version so you can go back to previous ones (looks like time machine, about that document you're working on)
• AirDrop
• Like Dropbox
• Peer-to-peer, WiFi based network
• Mail
• Optimized view
• Looks like iOS (iPad)
• New search suggestions [very easy to search through mail!]
• Conversation view (threading) [love this!]
2. iOS 5 (fall)
• Notifications Center (HUGE cheers)
• Combines all notifications (including missed calls, voice mails, text messages)
• Any time, any where, slide from top to reveal center
• No longer interrupts games. Bar of incoming text comes in at the top and disappears again. Tap bar and you'll go to that app
• Lock screen with a different view of notifications (list of icons instead of the list on a pop-up)
• Slide on a notification from the lock screen and you can go directly to the app
• Newsstand
• Has all magazines and newspapers subscriptions, uses background downloads (new issue comes out, downloads automatically on the background and replaces the cover of the new issue)
• Twitter integration
• Single sign-on (on Settings, can be used for every app)
• Camera and photos lets you tweet a picture straight from the app
• Love the UI for the "tweet sheet"
• Contacts integration
• Safari
• Reader (like on Macs): shows only article, makes it a single scrolling story instead of multiple pages
• Reading List: save a story and read it later (synced on all devices)
• Tabbed browsing (iPad only)
• Reminders
• Lists, dates, locations (you can set a reminder to say "call when I leave this place" and it will remind you when geolocation thinks that you're not at that location anymore
• Camera
• Lock screen shortcut [LOVE this!]
• Even if you have passcode set up, you can take a picture instantly but unable to go through anything else on the phone without inputing the passcode
• Volume-up button to take picture
• Pinch to zoom in the camera
• Hold a position on camera and it'll have auto-exposure and auto-focus locked to that position, even if you move the camera around
• Edit your photos: crop, rotate, red eye reduction, one click enhance
• Mail
• Bold, italic, underline, indentation, drag addresses between fields, flag mails, search entire message
• PC-free (another big cheer)
• Setup and activate straight from the device (instead of connecting to iTunes)
• Over the air software updates
• Delta updates OTA
• Game Center
• iMessage
• Messaging between all iOS 5 devices
• Sends text, photos, video, contacts, group messages
• Pushed to all devices
3. iCloud (with iOS 5, free)
• Stores content and wirelessly pushes it to all devices
• Calendar sharing: push new events to all devices sharing the calendar
• Mail: @me.com, pushed to all devices, inboxes and folders are kept up to date on all devices
• AppStore: download from cloud for apps not on a device. In the future, you can download an app for all devices
• iBook: same as AppStore. Bookmarks also synced to all devices
• Backup: once daily (over Wi-Fi). New device, use AppleID and password and everything will be downloaded to new device from cloud
• Purchased music, apps & books; camera roll (photos & videos); device settings; app data
• Documents in the Cloud
• Photo Stream: take or import photo on one device, pushed to all others. iOS devices save the last 1,000 photos, while Macs save all. Photos kept in iCloud for 30 days
• iTunes in the Cloud: download from iCloud for any songs not on device. Can do this automatically for future purchases (download to all devices)

And one more thing... ("It's a small thing")
iTunes Match ($24.99/year)
[Why I think they're winning over Amazon.com Cloud and Google Music] Match non-iTunes music (ripped from CD) with music on iTunes store. Takes minutes (not weeks) [jab at other services] because it's already on the Cloud (scan and match instead of upload). Upgrade songs to the 256 kbps AAC DRM-free.


For the past 10 years, Mac OS X hasn't changed too much, but it has improved functionality quite amazingly.