Apple’s WWDC 2011 Keynote should be underway shortly (10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern).
Apple has already announced that Steve Jobs will unveil the next generation mobile operating system – iOS 5, iCloud – Apple’s long rumored new cloud-based services and Mac OS X Lion – the eighth major release of Mac OS X at today’s event.
Updates will be posted from top to the bottom (bottom newest) so stay tuned and hit refresh to get the latest news.
It remains to be seen if Apple will be live video streaming the event. We’ll keep you posted.
To avoid any confusion, the event starts at this time across various timezones:
- 07:00AM – Hawaii
- 10:00AM – Pacific
- 11:00AM – Mountain
- 12:00PM – Central
- 01:00PM – Eastern
- 06:00PM – London
- 07:00PM – Paris
- 09:00PM – Moscow
- 10:30PM – India
- 01:00AM – Singapore (June 8th)
- 02:00AM – Tokyo (June 8th)
You can find the last minute WWDC 2011 thoughts, predictions and rumors and our iOS 5 wish list here.
Folks at Thisismynext have just revealed that iOS 5 could get BBM-style messaging, Android-style notifications, widgets, and more.
Greg Kumparak of MobileCrunch has spotted a secret banner at the WWDC 2011 venue, is it for Steve Jobs’ famous “one more thing”. Will it be the next generation Time Capsule that we’ve heard will act as a local hub for iCloud services or iPhone 5/iPhone 4S? Any guesses?
It looks like Wal-Mart has dropped the price of the 16 GB iPhone 4 model from $197 to $147. Is Apple planning to launch iPhone 4S/iPhone 5? Or is Apple also planning to drop the prices of iPhone 4 until it launches the next generation iPhone this fall? Is that Apple’s one more thing and the reason for the secret banner. We can’t wait to find out.
Announcement that the presentation will begin shortly.
Steve Jobs has just come on stage, getting a standing ovation.
He is going over some WWDC stats.
Steve Jobs: “Today we’re going to talk about software”
“Lion, iOS 5, and some kind of interesting new cloud stuff.”
Steve Jobs calls Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi on stage for the Lion demo.
Schiller is going over some Mac related stats – 28% Mac growth, -1% PC growth.
Lion will come with 250 new features. He will be going through 10 features.
The first one is multitouch gestures, talking about how they’ve learnt so much from iOS.
The next one is Full Screen Applications.
The third one is Mission Control, which he says is the best feature of Lion.
Craig Federighi to give a demo of the first three features.
Safari UI looks clean without scroll bars, two finger gestures to go through Safari history, three finger gestures to go back and forth between windows.
Schiller is back on stage. Next feature: Mac App Store. It is now the number 1 place where users are buying Mac software.
Mac App Store will get in-app purchases like the App Store and push notifications.
It looks like iOS is ported to the Mac.
Next feature is LaunchPad, which allows you to get to any app with one gesture just like iOS homescreen.
Feature no. 6 is Resume, it remembers what you were doing and where you were.
Next feature is Auto Save.
Feature no. 8 is Versions, All along, autosave is saving your document. And Versions is saving all your versions of the document.
Craig is back to give a demo of these features.
Schiller is back on stage. The next feature is AirDrop – new document sharing method. AirDrop is a peer to peer file sharing utility.
Number 10: a completely new version of Mail in Lion.
Craig is back to give a demo.
Lion will be available for only $29. Buy once and you can install it on all the Macs, which is great.
Scott Forstall taking the stage for iOS 5. Can’t wait to find out the new features and improvements.
He is going over the stats.
Forstall: Our customers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the iPad 2. In the first 14 months, we’ve sold 25 million iPads.
90k apps now available for the iPad in the App Store.
Our customers have downloaded more than 14 billion apps from the App Store. Crazy numbers!
Apple has paid out $2.5 billion to iOS developers.
He is now showing some of the apps.
iOS 5!
Feature no. 1 – Notifications, awesome!
Forstall: Customers said they wanted a better way to deal with them. So we did that. We’ve solved those issues, and gone far beyond it. We call it Notification Center.
You can manage specific app alerts in the Notification center — so you can dismiss just your Facebook notifications or SMS.
Feature no. 2 – Newsstand – a store for Magazine and newspapers.
Feature no. 3 – Twitter integration.
Forstall: Now as I’m sure everyone is familiar, this is an incredibly popular service. We want to make it even easier for our customers to use it on iOS. First, we’re adding single sign-on. Now when you go to the settings app, you can login, and you’re configured for Twitter.
It is integrated with Safari and Contacts.
Feature no. 4 – Safari
Forstall: We’re making it even better. But first is Reader. It comes up here when you’re reading a story on a website.” Hmm, it reformats pages to make them more readable.
Safari also gets the Reading list feature, so can save a link on the iPad to read it later on the iPhone.
Safari finally gets full tab browsing.
Feature no. 5 – Reminders
Feature no. 6 – Camera
- Lock screen shortcut to get to the camera.
- Volume up to take photos.
- Crop and rotate.
- Red-eye reduction.
- Auto-enhance from iPhone.
Feature no. 7 – Mail
Some of the improvements:
- Rich text formatting
- Control identation
- Search entire messages
- Swipe the inbox in and out in iPad portrait mode
Feature no. 8 – PC FREE – this is huge!
Forstall: People get these incredible devices… they get them home, they open the box, and they see this [connect to iTunes].
You can activate on the device, and you’re ready to go.
Software updates are now over the air.
So you no longer need to plugin to update your software. And they’re now Delta updates. Instead of downloading the whole OS, you only download what’s changed. That was definitely required.
Feature No. 9 – Game Center
- Achievement points
- Friends to friends
- Recommended friends
- Buy games directly from Game Center
Feature no. 10 – iMessage:
iMessage is a new messaging service between all iOS 5 customers to share photos, videos and contacts.
Forstall: We’ve added delivery receipts, and optional read receipts. Typing notifications, so you can see if someone is typing. Pushed to all of your devices, so you can pick up where you left off. Support over 3G and Wi-Fi, and it’s all encrypted.
Forstall demos some of the features.
Forstall: So that’s iOS… and these are just 10 of more than 200 new user features.
Some other features:
- Mirror iPad 2 to television wirelessly
- Wi-Fi Sync to iTunes
iOS 5 will be compatible with:
- iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4
- iPad and iPad 2
- 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch.
iOS 5 will be released this fall. So folks, what do you think about iOS 5? Let us know in the comments.
Steve Jobs back on stage to talk about iCloud.
Steve Jobs: We thought the PC would be the hub for your digital life. Where you put your photos, your video, your music.
“You were going to acquire it, and sync it to the Mac, and everything would work fine. And it did… but it’s broken down in the last few years.”
“Why? Because all your devices have photos, have video, have music. If I buy something on my phone, I have to sync it to get a song I bought. Then I have to sync that to other devices, and if I have photos, it’s the same thing… and keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy!”
“We’ve got a solution for this problem. We’re going to demote the PC and the mac to just be a device. We’re going to move your hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.”
“We think it’s way more than that.”
“Some people think a cloud is just a hard disk in the sky.”
iCloud stores content in cloud, wirelessly pushes to all devices. It comes completely integrated with apps.
Contacts, Calendar, and Mail have been written from the ground up to be iCloud apps.
Apple has added three more apps to iCloud.
First is the App Store.
“You can buy them on your devices. Maybe the app you want isn’t on the device you’ve got with you. You can now see your purchase history on all devices.”
“You just push the buttons and download from the cloud. There’s no extra charge.”
iBooks is also compatible with iCloud.
Wirelessly backup devices to iCloud.
Steve Jobs: “We’ve added wireless backup to the cloud. Once daily, we’re gonna back up a lot of your important content to the cloud. If you ever get a new phone, everything will be loaded onto that phone automatically.”
Pages, Keynote and Numbers are also compatible with iCloud.
Its demo time. iCloud is very impressive. What’s your take?
iCloud works across all iOS devices, and Macs and PCs too. Amazing!
Steve Jobs: “We’ve been working for 10 years to get rid of the file system. When you try and teach someone to use a Mac, everything is fine, until you show them the file system. On iOS, you don’t have to think about it. But how do you move those documents around? Now you can.”
Photo Stream – photos also get some iCloud love.
“This next one is maybe my favorite one. And it’s called Photo Stream. And it’s going to bring the cloud to photos. How many times have we taken photos on our iPhone and wanted to share them on the iPad. Wouldn’t it be great if they were already there?”
“I take photos on any device, puts them in the camera roll, and then it’s uploaded to the cloud and downloaded to all of my devices, just waiting for me when I get home. In addition, I can import photos.”
Your last 1000 photos are stored in the cloud.
Photos are also synced to your Mac or PC. They will be stored in the cloud for 30 days.
“Last, but not least. iTunes in the cloud.”
“For the songs you’ve already bought, we’ve added a purchased button.”
“It shows the history of all the songs you’ve bought on any device. I can download any song to any device by pushing that little cloud button.”
“At no additional charge.”
“This is the first time you’ve seen this in the music industry. Multiple downloads to different devices for no charge.”
“So in the future, it will push it to all of my devices.”
Eddy is back on stage for a demo.
iCloud will be the killer feature for iOS devices.
Music quality is 256k AAC.
“We want every user to take advantage of these, and we know if we make it free, they will. We’re very excited about it.”
You can disable iCloud, but it is on by default.
Developer beta of iCloud will be available today.
iTunes in the cloud available today in iOS 4.3.
One more thing!
It is related to iTunes in the cloud and how Apple will deal with songs you’ve ripped.
“One, you can sync your devices over Wi-Fi or cable, and then you can rely on iCloud. Or, if it’s just a few songs you love, you can buy them on iTunes. But we’re offering a third way, and we call it iTunes Match.”
“We have 18m songs in the music store. Our software will scan what you have, the stuff you’ve ripped, and figure out if there’s a match. If you have to upload your whole library, that could take weeks. If we’re scanning and matching, we don’t have to upload them. They’re in the cloud.”
“In additions, iTunes Match will upgrade the songs to 256k AAC DRM free. And it costs just $24.99 per year. So if you’ve got a bunch of music that you didn’t get from iTunes, you can get it in the cloud. Now if you look at some competitors, you’ll be surprised.”
Steve Jobs is talking about the third data center that they’ve built to support iCloud services.
Steve Jobs: “So I hope you like the 3 things we’ve unveiled this morning. We have a great week ahead for you.”
That’s it folks, that is the end of the Keynote. Thanks to folks at Thisismynext for the live coverage.
Let us know what you think about iOS 5 and iCloud.
