No Surprises from Apple at WWDC in San Francisco but Plenty of Groundbreaking Announcements

The tech world has been anxiously awaiting this day, the Apple WWDC conference in San Francisco, where among other things Apple makes new product announcements. The rumors have been flying however three new product announcements have all been set in stone:

  • iOS 5 – the latest version of iOS for the iPhone, iPod, and iPad
  • Mac OS X Lion – Apple’s new OS for their desktop and laptop computers
  • iCloud – this has been what most of the buzz is about – a new cloud-based service from Apple

Unfortunately there were no surprises as some had thought Apple might debut the iPhone 5 or some other wild and crazy product we had never heard of, or thought-up yet! Still some really groundbreaking products and as an Apple-user I can tell you that life is only getting better thanks to these innovations.

Below is a quick recap of each of the product releases discussed at the WWDC:

iOS5
  • Notifications – can easily swipe your finger across a notification now and get right to the app
  • NewsStand – one central location for all magazine subscriptions
  • Twitter – Twitter is now fully-integrated into iOS
  • Safari – lots of new features, finally added tabbed browsing
  • Reminders – easily set reminders
  • Camera – faster, can use up and down volume buttons to take pictures, easy ways to take pictures without entering passcode
  • Mail – new features added to Mail, better search functionality
  • PC Free – no longer need to connect your iOS device to a computer/iTunes – setup and software updates now happen over the air
  • GameCenter – a few new features added but I’m not a gamer so not too exciting for me
  • iMessages – awesome messaging app for iPhone/iPad/iPod – going to crush Blackberry Messenger
  • AirPlay Mirroring – view iPad screen on your TV
  • Shipping to consumers this Fall
Mac OS X Lion
  • Gestures – goodbye scrollbars, navigate with simple gestures on the trackpad
  • Full screen applications – switching between applications with simple swipe gesture
  • Mission Control – centralized interface to view everything going on in one place
  • New App store – faster, better features for developers
  • Launchpad – simple gesture and a pinch motion to access your apps
  • Resume – brings you back to where you last were in your app
  • Auto-save – automatically saves your documents so you don’t have to worry about constantly saving
  • Versions – automatically saves versions of your document as you’re working
  • AirDrop – easy way to share files between computers
  • Mail – finally! A brand new version of mail, very slick – looks much more like the iPad Mail App. Now includes “conversation view” which allows for message threading
  • No longer available on a disc, only available from the Mac App store, and it’s only 4MB!
  • Price will be only $29
  • Mac OSX Lion will be available to consumers in July
iCloud
  • Stores your content and wireless pushes it to all your devices
  • When you make a new contact, calendar event, etc. it all goes to iCloud
  • Great for mail – kept consistent across all devices
  • Today MobileMe dies, iCloud is its replacement, and it’s free!
  • Wireless backup to the cloud, get a new phone – poof, everything from your old phone is loaded on it
  • Documents in the cloud – working on a Pages doc on your iPad? Automatically gets saved to the cloud
  • Now your files don’t have to live on your computer, forget filesystems, it’s all in the cloud now
  • iCloud is also built directly-into Apple TV so you can view iCloud photos, etc. on your TV
  • iTunes in the cloud – anything you buy from iTunes is available on any of your other devices for free
  • 9 apps in total and they’re all free!
  • To get iCloud just update to iOS 5, enter your Apple ID and iCloud will be turned on by default
  • iTunes in the cloud will begin running with the current version of iOS
Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton