Apple Unveils iCloud, iOS 5, Shows off Mac OSX Lion

It's that time of year again! Apple holds a developer's conference every year in San Francisco called WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference, discussing, usually from more of an app developer's point of view, some of the new products or services that Apple is creating. This year's event was sold out in less than ten hours, and tickets weren't cheap either, so we'll see what they paid to see.


Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO (Currently on medical leave), with the help of some fellow Apple employees, announced three new products/services, and showed off one more, that had already been announced. None of these three products are actual physical products, but they are just as interesting.

Apple's iCloud logo

iCloud: The first product announced is called iCloud, and is an online service similar to the current, and slowly phasing  out, Apple service Mobile Me. iCloud is an online service that stores and syncs "your music, photos, apps, documents, and more", as written on the Apple website. The service then syncs all of that data with any other internet-connected Apple device. iCloud will also work on a Windows 7 or Windows Vista device will iTunes. Best of all, it's all free, for up to 5GB of storage.

iCloud will store any music bought via the iTunes Store, but you will also be able to store music you got any other way, be it a ripped CD or the Amazon MP3 store, for $24.99 a year. iCloud does this by scanning the song and matching it with an existing song in it's library of over 18 million songs. iCloud now knows you have the "rights" to the song, and will stream it at your command. This won't work for any song not in the library of 18 Million, so if you have music you created yourself, or an unpublished remix of an existing track, this won't work. One of the major benefits of this service, though, is the fact that if you have a song saved as a very low quality track, iCloud will play it back as the 256Kbps quality that iTunes currently offers.

iCloud in Action

iCloud also will take any picture you take with your iPhone, upload it to the cloud, and sync it with any of your other devices. The service lets you see your already purchased apps, and allows you to download an app again, for free on up to five devices. iBooks will also be synced between devices, as well as any documents created with iWorks, which apple just released the iPhone version of.

Another really important feature, iCloud backs up all of the data on your iPhone or iPod touch over the air, so there is no need to connect your device to a computer.

iCloud will be available for free this fall, along with iOS 5, which will be discussed later in the post.

Mac OSX Lion: After discussing iCloud, Jobs handed over the presentation to Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, who talked a little bit about the latest edition of Mac OSX, called Lion.

Mac OSX Lion will be available as a 4GB download from the Mac App-Store, and will cost $29.99. Most of the new features in Lion, at least the ones that Apple showed off, were already talked about, and you can read my post about those here.

iOS 5: The last service talked about at today's keynote was iOS 5. iOS, Apples mobile operating system that's used on the iPhone and iPod touch, is updated every so often, but a major release, like iOS 5, is released only around once a year.

iOS 5 will be available in July as a free update for your iPod touch or iPhone, and will many new features. One of those is the "Notification Center".

The notification center is accessed by simply swiping down on the screen. This will show a list of notifications, including email, text messages, and notifications from other apps on your phone. Notifications will also no longer interrupt everything you are doing, rather they will just slide in above the app you are currently using, and disappear quickly. Notifications are also accessible from the lock screen, and you can easily respond to a notification from the lock screen.

Revamped Notifications for iOS 5

iMessage will replace the SMS app for the iPhone, and will also be available on the iPod touch. iMessage allows users to send text messages via their 3G data provider, or they can send free text messages over a data connection to anyone else with an Apple iOS device. Messages can also include pictures, sound, and video.

iMessage for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch

Newsstand, one of the new additions in iOS 5, is the iBooks for magazines. Newsstand differs from all other apps, because instead of opening up like a normal app, it opens as a regular folder currently in iOS would. The folder differs from a regular folder, as it contains digital magazines, instead of apps. The background in the Newsstand folder looks like the wooden bookshelf currently found in the iBooks app.

Newsstand, a folder of magazines

Reminders is a new app that will be found in iOS 5. Reminders allows one to set reminders for himself, and organize reminders in to do lists. Reminders syncs with iCloud, Outlook, and iCal, so your to do's will be everywhere.

Reminders for iOS 5

Although Twitter already has an iOS app, with iOS 5, it will be integrated as an app that comes with the device, similar to what Apple is doing already with YouTube. Twitter will now be integrated into many of the apps Apple already has on their devices, such as Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, and Maps. One will be able to tweet directly from any of those apps.

Twitter, integrated into iOS 5

The camera is now accessible from the lock screen, so if you ever have a photo you really need to capture, and fast, your iDevice will help you. The camera button on the lock screen even bypasses any passwords set on the device, so your camera will be ready when you need it. The camera also has a new grid that you can use for better alignment while taking a photo.

The camera app, accessible from the lock screen

The Photos app will also be improved, with new photo editing features such as crop, rotate, enhance, and remove red-eye. The camera app also allows you to organize the photos in albums right on your iDevice. Of course, with iCloud, your photos will be synced to all of your other Apple devices.

The new photos app, now with editing

Safari, Apple's built in web browser, is also improved with new tabbed web browsing, a reader function that strips out all of the junk from a website, and just shows you the content you want to see, as well as a reading list that allows you to save articles for reading later. Procrastination at it's finest.

Safari with tabbed browsing

With iOS 5, any iDevice is completely PC free, no computer is needed to set up the device, or to put on music movies, or anything else. The new iCloud service takes care of backup, so you can easily restore a device wirelessly.

Some of the smaller improvements include some new features for the Mail and Calendar apps, an update to GameCenter, Apple's gaming social network, which allows users to set a profile picture, WiFi sync, which allows you to sync music, podcasts, and videos wirelessly with your computer over a WiFi connection. Apple also added multitouch gestures to the iPad, which allow you to swipe through apps by swiping your fingers across the screen, etc. The iPad 2, with the iOS 5 update, will be able to mirror the image you are seeing on it's screen wirelessly, instead of using the HDMI cable currently available.

I myself got extremely excited when writing this post, because this update to iOS 5, along with iCloud, really takes care of many of the problems people had with iOS devices. The only negative is that iOS 5 and iCloud will only be available in the fall, so we've got a while to wait.

The reason that Apple announced these products so early is because they need developers to write apps for these platforms, which takes a while. Apple developers have access to Lion, iCloud, and iOS 5 now, and can start developing for those platforms. If these new products really have you salivating, you could shell out the $100 is costs to become an Apple developer, but you have to own a Mac computer.

Apple Releases iWork to the iPhone

Students and business-people alike both need, on occasion, to type up a paper really quick, or to create a quick presentation for their meetings the next day. Up until now, if all you had on you was an iPhone or iPod touch, you were mostly out of luck. Using some free or paid apps, you could type up a few sentences, but adding formatting or pictures was really just not possible. Until now.

In a press release earlier this morning, Apple, the makers of the iPhone and iPod touch, announced three new apps for the iPhone, all of which are branded as part of the "iWork Suite". These three apps are Pages, which allows for some heavy word-processing power, Keynote, which allows you to create slick looking presentations, and Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet-creating app.

All three of these apps were first available on the Macintosh, then later came to the iPad, and now have finally arrived on the iPhone and iPod touch. Each app is available in the iTunes App Store, and will cost you $9.99 a piece, which, although it seems kind of pricey, could be worth it. For current owners of the iWork apps on the iPad, the iPhone version is a free upgrade.

Although this seems kind of cool and very useful, creating presentations or spreadsheets on such a small screen is a slightly daunting task. Also, the iPad versions of these apps have not been such a smashing success,  which could be a bad sign for this new version. 

Overall, these apps are a little pricey, but when you need them, you really do need them. If you have to create quick documents or presentations on the fly, then go ahead and shell out the $10 for the app. However, if you don't really need it, but you thing it would be cool to have, you probably should save your money for a better cause.

White iPhone 4 Finally out; Thicker? (UPDATE: Apple Responds)

     It has been nearly a year since Apple announced it's latest edition of it's smartphone device, the iPhone 4. Like every edition of the iPhone before this one, it was going to be available in both black or white colors. The white edition of the iPhone 4 was delayed for a few weeks, and then completely taken down from the Apple website.
     Rumors have been floating around pretty much ever since the white iPhone was delayed. There were both rumors about why it was delayed, and about when it would come out. Although we may never know the answer to why the white iPhone 4 was delayed for so long, we do know when it will come out. The answer: today.
     Apple posted a picture of the white iPhone 4 on it's website yesterday, along with a caption saying that the white iPhone 4 will be available tomorrow. That tomorrow is now today.
     The white iPhone 4 is available for purchase now, and many have already bought it. The ones who already have the device in their possession have started a buzz about the thickness of the white iPhone 4 compared to the black version.
     The picture below shows the slight difference in the thickness of the white iPhone compared to the black Model.

     Speculation is always possible as to what the reason for the thicker device is. However, I believe that this difference in thickness means next to nothing, and time should not be wasted guessing the reason for the thickness difference. One of the reasons that the white iPhone may be important, is that Apple wouldn't a new model of the same version phone if a newer version phone was just a few months away. This white iPhone launch seems to support the rumors that the iPhone 5 will not be coming out, as originally expected, in June 2011.

UPDATE: Apple responded to this claim by saying that, unlike what the picture above suggests, the white and black iPhone are actually the same size. Consumer Reports also did testing on this issue, and concluded that both models of the iPhone are the same thickness.

Will iPhone 5 feature NFC?

     A back and forth of reports have been going on about the iPhone 5, the expected name for the next version of the Apple iPhone and NFC. NFC stands for Near Field Communications, and is a way to transfer data wirelessly at very close distances. This would be useful for using your phone like a credit card, and making purchases just by waving the phone over the other NFC device.
     Bloomberg reported a few weeks ago that the iPhone 5 will come with a built in NFC chip. That report was then contradicted by The Independent, who said that if NFC appears at all, it will be in the iPhone 6th generation, rather than the iPhone 5. The contradictions continue as Elizabeth Woyke of Forbes claims (via SIA) that the iPhone 5 will have NFC built in after all.

Just met with an entrepreneur who says the iPhone 5 *will* have NFC...according to his friend, who works at Apple. Huh.

     With all the contradicting rumors, it's hard to tell which is true. Will the iPhone 5 contain a built-in NFC chip. We may have to wait for the iPhone 5 announcement, expected to be around June.