Apple WWDC: iOS 5, Lion, iCloud

Steve Jobs was on hand today to kick off Apple's WWDC keynote. Lion took the lead, with no surprises except a $29.99 pricetag and a July ship date. iOS is getting a new "Notification Center"; Twitter is being integrated; he announced a split thumbable keyboard for iPads; wireless syncing; and a native IM system for iOS devices, shipping in the Fall. iCloud will be free, syncing apps (Mail, Calendar, Contacts and iWork apps) across devices. Photostream is iCloud for pictures. iTunes iCloud will let you re-download your tracks at last, and iTunes Match will let you match your ripped CDs to Apple's copies.

Re:Maybe some links would be nice?

[roothog]

Just go anywhere on the web. Anywhere. Everybody's covering this today, finding more information isn't exactly hard.

Re:I skipped Snow Leopard

[xMrFishx]

Buying SL for the sake of getting Lion is spending money for the sake of it. No his concern is genuine. I thought this too as I watched the photo slideshow... There must be a way of burning it or acquiring it through a non internet distributed channel.

Re:Maybe some links would be nice?

[DJRumpy]

Here's the live blog (well not so live now) of the event. It has the essential information.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/wwdc-2011-liveblog-steve-jobs-talks-ios-5-os-x-lion-icloud-an/?sort=newest&refresh=60 [engadget.com]

Re:Xcode ...

[slimjim8094]

They did. Delta updates in App Store. All the devs in the room applauded, for precisely the reason you mentioned.

Didn't you know?

[SuperKendall]

Apple always does it last.

Then they do it best.

That's the MO that they have been repeating for years.

You just caught on?

Re:Matching my music with iTunes store?

[Americano]

From the Apple iCloud web page [apple.com], up shortly after the WWDC keynote finished:

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Italics/Bold sentence above emphasized by me.

If your music is already in the Itunes store, the match service will let you avoid having to upload it, and you might be able to upgrade the quality. If it's not in the itunes store, you can still upload it to the service, and have your non-mainstream stuff available to you in the same way, but you won't get the upgraded bitrate that a matched song might get you. I know I have a bunch of old, comparatively low-bitrate, mp3's in my collection... an upgrade of even half of them to 256kbps for the cost of a few minutes scanning my library and $25/yr doesn't sound like an unreasonable price when you factor in the time required to re-rip a couple hundred CDs at a higher bitrate.

Re:I skipped Snow Leopard

[MachineShedFred]

It's an app that you get from the app store. You copy /Applications/Install Mac OS X.app to your media of choice. This is how it has worked since the first developer preview like 5 months ago.

Re:In other words...

[jfanning]

Who said anything about easy access?!

NTFS has supported journelling for years and has Previous Versions feature (available from file Properties). Application resuming/restarting has been around since Vista and the OS has several hooks for registering for these events and messages. The fact that no-one implements it isn't relevant.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb525422(v=vs.85).aspx [microsoft.com]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb525423(v=vs.85).aspx [microsoft.com]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa373651(VS.85).aspx [microsoft.com]

It will be the same in Lion. Unless the apps are rewritten to support these features they won't work. It doesn't just happen magically.

Re:Xcode ...

[itsdapead]

How about making it so I don't have re-download 3+GB every time a minor dot-release of Xcode is released?

http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html - look for 'Efficient app updates'

Re:No install media, no deal

[jscotta44]

To each their own! I prefer my Mac Kit with OS X to Asus with Windows. I'm assuming that you also saved money by downloading a linux distro instead of Windows. I'll add up the hours I saved by not doing that and keep on being happy with my decision.

Re:No install media, no deal

[cheeks5965]

they're starting to lock in their HDs with non-standard pins and sensors, so you cant swap them out yourself. is this a big deal or not? i don't want to pay premium dollars to upgrade a commodity component. but at least on my current mbp i can access the hd and memory without voiding the warrantee. cutting out the battery would void the warantee, but i'm way out of waranee anyway (only 1 year without applecare, speaking of premium dollars)

Re:Didn't you know?

[node 3]

Like how they were the last company to make a PC, then the last company to make a GUI/WIMP PC, then the last company to make an MP3 player (well, that's one), then they were the last to make a touchscreen smartphone, then they were the last to make a tablet that isn't just a gimped PC...

They certainly aren't "always last". They are often first to do something in a major way, and often not. The only thing you can really say about this is that no matter when they do it, they are almost always the first to get it "right" (from the point of view of the consumer). Where that actually happens in the timeline of everything else is variable, although Apple does try to be earlier rather than later.