Be Excellent To Each Other

If you're not obsessed by Apple's products -- in other words you are normal, unlike me and most of the other bloggers reporting Apple news -- here's a brief-as-can-be bite-sized overview of what Apple said today and why you might care about it.

### iOS 5

* __What is it__: A new version of the system software for the iPhone and iPod.

* __Why should I care about it__: It brings a large number of very welcome (and arguably overdue) new features such as:
* Better notifications -- those little pop-ups that appear when you receive a new SMS or a missed call or something have been terrible in previous versions of iOS. For example, if you receive an SMS while talking on the phone, you need to deal with the message pop-up (by selecting Show or Cancel) before you can hang up the call. Now, they are all listed in the Notification Center, which you access at any time by swiping down from the top of the screen. (Like Android!)
* Newsstand -- like iBooks but for magazines and periodicals. Can download things in the background so the latest issues are there whenever you open the app.
* Twitter integration -- add your Twitter password in the Settings app, and all Twitter apps on your iOS device will use it automatically. Camera and Photos can post to Twitter with a single tap. You can also sent tweets from within Safari, Youtube, and Maps, and get photos from Twitter to add to your Contacts.
* Safari Reader -- a way to strip all the UI and ads out of the web page you are viewing, leaving only the text, for a less cluttered reading experience. Also stitches multi-page articles into a single page for you.
* Tabbed browsing -- Safari on the iPad will now have tabs. Very fast to switch between tabs, at least on the demo iPad 2.
* Reminders -- a built-in ToDo type client. Location aware (so you can set a reminder to appear when you arrive at work, say).
* Camera -- with a locked iPhone, double-clicking the Home button will bring up the camera app immediately (I think that one button now has about eleventy billion different features mapped to it). And the volume up button now works as a shutter release (previously, Apple yanked Camera+ from the App Store for doing that.) The Photos app has new edit features too, like red-eye reduction and a one-click ENHANCE mode.
* Mail -- some nips and tucks, including the ability to use formatting when composing, the ability to search the contents of emails, and the ability to swipe to view the message list in the iPad version in portrait view.
* Keyboard -- a new variant "split keyboard" for iPad, with two mini-keyboards attached to each side of the screen. Looks good for holding the iPad in two hand and typing with your thumbs.
* PC free -- no longer any need to sync with iTunes to start using a new iOS device. iOS updates delivered over the air, so no sync needed there either -- and they are small "delta" updates, so no more 600+ MB downloads. And iTunes syncs for your music will now run over Wi-fi.
* Game Center -- profiles can now have photos, it has new "recommended users" feature to suggest people to add to your friends list, and new modes to compare achievements between you and your friends. It still looks very weak compared to Xbox Live.
* iMessage -- a new complete messaging app, that can set text, pictures, videos, contacts, and do many-to-many group messaging. Synced across devices (so you can start a conversation on iPad and move seamlessly to iPhone).

* __How do I get it__: developers get a preview today, the rest of us have to wait until "this fall". It'll run on the iPhone 3GS and 4, the iPad and iPad 2, and the 3rd and 4th generation iPod Touch.

* __Tell me more__: go to [apple.com/ios/ios5](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/).

### Mac OS X Lion

* __What is it__: A new version of the system software for all of Apple's Mac computers.

* __Why should I care about it__:
* UI tweaks that aim to bring some of the iPad's minimalist feel to the Mac: multitouch gestures, full screen apps, a new app launcher that looks like iOS, Mission Control. The idea is that you use all your apps maximised and the system provides intuitive gestures to move between them. Lots of three-finger swipes that only really work on a Magic Trackpad or the built-in trackpad on Mac laptops. Apple, it seems, are moving away from the mouse.
* Resume -- again, another iPhone-esque feature; new support for apps to remember what you were doing when you restart them, right down to which text is selected.
* Auto-save and Versions -- your documents are saved all the time, and OS X remembers each and every save so you can go back to older versions whenever you want.
* AirDrop -- a super-easy way to transfer files between two computers on the same network without messing around with USB sticks, email, IM, etc.
* New, much improved version of the comes-with-the-OS email app (which in previous versions of OS X has been pretty anaemic).

Note that most of this stuff is only going to work out-of-the-box with Apple's own apps. Developers will need to do work to support, say, full-screen mode, or the clever Versions stuff.

* __How do I get it__: It's out in "July" (Apple wasn't any more specific than that). Costs $29 and is available through the Mac App Store -- so you just click buttons on any current Mac, and it downloads and installs the upgrade automatically. It's not clear how you reinstall the OS onto, say, a new hard drive you've just put in your Mac.

* __Tell me more__: go to [apple.com/macosx/lion](http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/).



### iCloud

* __What is it__: Apple's "cloud service" offering.

* __Why should I care about it__: it means you can stop thinking about syncing and always have your data stuff.
* Your content (music, documents, media, bookmarks, iBooks, etc etc) lives, first and foremost, on Apple's servers.
* All your devices attach to the servers and download your stuff whenever you go to work on it.
* It's free! Unlike the $99/year Mobile Me service it replaces. No ads, either.
* iOS devices will back themselves up automatically once per day. If you get a new device, you enter your iTunes account and can restore the last backup without plugging anything in. The backup covers iTunes purchased content (music, books, apps), camera roll photos, device settings, and app data like saved games.
* Documents in the Cloud -- seamlessly sync documents for Apple's iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) between Macs and iOS devices. Third party developers can choose to add support to their own apps.
* Photo Stream -- your Camera Roll on all your devices is synced in the background between them, all the time (so a photo you take on the iPhone will appear on your iPad and your Mac a few seconds later, bandwidth permitting).
* iTunes in the Cloud -- buy a song on any of your devices and it's delivered to all of them. Can redownload tracks at any time. No mention of playlist syncing, but that's a logical feature to add.

*__Sounds great, any downsides?__
* Only some of this stuff works on Windows PCs too -- e.g. photos end up in the Pictures folder.
* Only the last 1,000 photos and only from the last 30 days are in the cloud. The rest you have to move to local storage. Even Apple can't afford that many hard disks, it seems.
* You only get 5 GB of space for the backups and document sharing. That's more than it sounds, though, because it doesn't include music, video, or app space, or your Photo Stream.

* __What about music I've ripped instead of stuff i've bought from iTunes?__ iCloud doesn't inherently do anything with music you rip; the iTunes in the Cloud feature only works for purchases through iTunes. However, there is a way around that. iTunes Match will, for $25 a year, scan your music collection full of ripped (or pirated!) tracks, and add the iTunes equivalent version to your online library. This will be a 256 kbit/sec AAC file, so if it's an old mp3 you have then it'll be significantly better audio quality too.

* __When can I have it__: ships with iOS 5, so "this fall" or sooner if you're a developer running a beta.

* __Tell me more__: go to [apple.com/icloud](http://www.apple.com/icloud/).