Apple's WWDC is here and over the next few hours we'll see what Steve and Co have been hiding up their sleeves. It's already been eventful with the first hour being dedicated to the impressive new Mac software, Lion. Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller kicked things off a barrage of Mac-facts. "We now have over 54 million Mac users around the world and growing” they said. According to Apple every year, PC sales fall and Mac sales rise. And why is the Mac becoming such a force in the computing industry? "They’re [Macs] great not just because of the hardware, but because of the software they run.” After a crowd rousing introduction, things got down to business and Apple unveiled some exciting new OS X features (250 of them in fact.)
Here's a recap of the last hour starting with Lion's features.
Disc-Free Upgrade–
Lion will be available only from the app store as a 4GB download. The downloaded doesn't require rebooting and you can use it on all personally authorized Macs. And the price? Not the usual $129, $29.99 (just over £18.)
Mission Control and Multi-Touch Gestures-
The heart of the new OS X will be Mission Control. Basically Exposé on drugs, Mission Control will give users the power to take command of their cluttered desktop (as a blogger and as student, I say Amen to that.) Lion is designed through and through to support multi-tap. Using tap-to-zoom, pinching, two-finger swiping etc you can control your open and closed windows more efficiently or as Apple described it, "The page feels alive beneath your fingers.”
Autosave-
That one time you forget to save, something goes wrong and then you're ruined. But not anymore. Apple's new autosave feature will keep track of applications and documents so that when they are existed (even without being saved) they can be recalled in the state they were exited. E.g. if you've highlighted some text, exited, then came back, the text will still be highlighted. Plus multiple versions of documents will be autosaved so you can flick back through previous versions of a document if you want to reuse something you deleted, or if you've done something wrong.
Airdrop-
Airdrop attempts to put an end to memory sticks and portable hard-drives. This wireless peer to peer file-sharing feature is auto-setup and auto-detect allowing you to effortlessly send documents to nearby Mac users.
World domination-
After telling everyone all about Lion, Apple went on to, big themselves up basically. With a dizzying amount of facts, they described the dominance over every aspect of the tech market from tablet PCs (the iPad) to music downloads (iTunes.) Then they moved onto some iOS 5 features.
Notification centre-
All notifications will be in one place so that you can edit them as you place. Calls will no longer interrupt your videos, games etc. Instead, you can now opt for a small non-invasive banner at the top of the screen.
News stand- In another kick to Kindle Apple have put a lot of effort into news-stand. This new feature will allow users to download mags onto a virtual shelf on the homescreen.
There’s also lots of Twitter integration.
And Safari has a new button, reader which allows you to enter ‘reading mode’ when viewing articles online. Readers mode strips away everything but the text and allows users to select bits of text to send to other people.
keep checking for more WWDS news as it unfolds.