As planned, Steve Jobs – who is currently on a medical leave of absence from Apple – made an appearance to host the WWDC 2011. He unveiled the personally unveiled iCloud and left the briefing on Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5 to his staff.
The 5-day Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2011 is being held at San Francisco.
iCloud
Steve Jobs personally unveiled the much anticipated iCloud services from Apple. The set of free cloud services promises to work seamlessly with applications on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store a user’s content in iCloud and again automatically and wirelessly push it to all of the same user’s devices. When anything changes on any one of the devices, all of the user’s other devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.
The iCloud beta and Cloud Storage APIs are available immediately to iOS and Mac Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iCloud will be available this autumn concurrently with iOS 5.
Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for US$24.99 per year (US only).
iOS 5
Scott Forstall – Apple’s senior vice president of iOS – paraded 10 of the promised 200 new features for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
Main new features include: Notification Center, a new way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption; iMessage, a new messaging service that lets users easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS devices; Newsstand, a new way to purchase and organise a user’s newspaper and magazine subscriptions; and PC Free feature, where iOS 5 users can activate and set up their iOS device right out of the box and get software updates over the air with no computer required.
The iOS 5 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iOS Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iOS 5 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (fourth generation) and iPod touch (third generation) this autumn.
Mac OS X Lion
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, briefed WWDC 2011 attendees on the eighth major release of Apple’s desktop operating system, which features more than 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs.
Main new features of the Mac OS X Lion includes: new Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app. The Mac App Store will now be built right into the OS.
Mac OS X Lion will be available in July as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard from the Mac App Store for US$29.99. At about 4GB, it is the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store. Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and will be available in July from the Mac App Store for US$49.99.
