Introduction
Last Monday, Apple opened their Worldwide Developers Conference with a slew of announcements. Those who follow tech news were very pleased with the new soft products (I say "soft" because no hardware announcements were made), but for those who rely on us younger folk to interpret tech news (e.g., our parents), these new products may need some explanation. Below is a description of each new product's highlights, presented in a way that will, hopefully, make sense to our non-techie eleven readers. And of course, for those who actually do know something about tech, I'm including some additional commentary.
OS X Lion
OS X is the main operating system for all mac desktop and laptop computers. Lion is the name of the 7th iteration of OS X operating system. There are at least 250 new features in Lion, and there is no reason for me to cover all of them for you. Honestly, a lot of the features provide some minor tweaks to the system that, unless you're really looking for them, and you're really proficient at iOS (the operating system for iPods (touches), iPhones, and iPads) you won't notice. For example, Lion incorporates multi-touch gestures so you can use a four-finger swipe to go between open applications. However, there were some cool features showcased that make me think that it is worth the $29.99 upgrade if you use your computer a lot and every day.
Full Screen Applications - With Lion, you can make any application go completely full screen so you can focus solely on that application. A practical use of this is in Word. Imagine you're writing a paper, and you don't want anything else on the screen to distract you. Now, you can make Word full screen so you can take advantage of your whole screen and keep your focus on one application at a time. This feature, of course, will also be great for screen real estate demanding applications such as Photoshop, iPhoto, and Aperture, where editing pictures on a full screen will make a huge difference.
Mission Control - If you use a lot of applications at the same time, this will be a big feature. My guess is that if you are reading this, you probably don't. So, don't worry about it :)
Mac App Store - The App Store interface that iOS (again, iPod, iPhone, iPad) users are so accustom to is now being ported to the desktop/laptop. The Mac App Store philosophy is simple: All apps for your mac are sold in one place, with a similar interface to iTunes. Best of all, just like iOS apps, all updates go through this one store, making the process super simple.
Lauchpad - When the first iteration of Mac OS X came out, it included something that was absolutely revolutionary: the dock. In the dock, you could place your most used applications so you would not have to search through a whole applications folder to get to what you wanted most often and easily. Launchpad takes the idea of an application launcher and gives it the iOS treatment. Just like on an iOS device, you can have your apps presented on screens and in sub-folders in rows, instead of in folders. It will make finding and organizing your apps much easier than looking through the applications folder because YOU organize them however YOU want. For example, you can make a folder of all of your photo editing software, or one of your games. The best way to describe it is by having you imagine an iOS home screen, but on a mac. This will be a real benefit to most users.
Resume - You know what's the worst part about writing a paper? When you have written the most brilliant piece of prose in your life and your computer dies before you have a chance to save it. Yup, we've all been there. In Lion, everything is auto-saved. To which you might say, "well sure, Word already does that." True, however, this auto-saving feature is system-wide, meaning you can also save auto-save changes on photo edits, iMovie projects, or anything else you're working on. Even better, Resume allows you to instantly resume where you were in an application when you quit it. This means that if you're working on an album in iPhoto, for example, when you quit iPhoto and reopen it, it will take you right back to where you were, instead of back to the library.
Thoughts - This isn't a new feature, I just wanted to present my thoughts. When Leopard came out in 2007, it was a big evolutionary leap from the previous version of OS X. When Snow Leopard came out two years later, it was a very minor update that just made everything run much much faster. Lion, while not a complete revolutionary upgrade, is somewhere in-between evolutionary and revolutionary. The features mentioned above are fantastic for the heavy user and will make the OS X user experience better. And Lion makes it clear that Apple understands that users like the mobile interface and is willing to incorporate the elements that work into the desktop/laptop computing environment. For the heavy user, the $30 upgrade is worth it. For the light user, there's no need to be a first-adopter. Your stuff will work just fine for the time being.
iOS 5
iOS 5 is the operating system for iPods, iPhones, and iPads. This is the 5th major iteration of the software and, boy, is it a doozy! There are sites that have almost all of the 200 new features of iOS 5, but again, you don't care about them. Here are the ones that I find to be most noteworthy:
iOS 5 will be "PC free" - This means that your iDevice will sync with everything without needing to plug it in to a computer. Software updates (including system updates) will happen wirelessly, music syncing will happen wirelessly, and new device activation will all happen wirelessly. Of course, your email, contacts, calendars, etc. that already sync wirelessly will continue to do so.
New Notifications - Apple took a page out of Android's playbook and completely revamped their system of notifications. Now, when you get a notification, a little bar will show up at the top of the screen, without interrupting whatever application you're in, with your message. Want to read it? Just use a single finger swipe down from the top and your notifications will appear, along with the current weather and stock prices (although I imagine that will be completely customizable soon enough). This will eliminate the problem of being in the middle of working in one app and getting a pop-up notification that your friend posted on your Facebook wall. Now, you will be able to choose when you look at the notification. This is a far less intrusive way of dealing with notifications and will really improve the user experience.
iMessage - Think BBM or PingChat, but done in a completely streamlined way. Your iDevice can now send free text and multimedia messages to your other iDevice friends, and it's all organized in the Messages app. In other words, you can text to other iDevices for free. Fun fact: mobile carriers learned about this at the keynote. Suffice it to say, they were not pleased. But as users, we are!
Reminders - We've all made lists of things we need to do. Pick up milk at the store, return book to library, etc. Of course, making a list is one thing. But how often have you forgotten to do those things, even though you made a list? This is where Reminders comes in. In addition to being a to-do list manager, it adds geolocation. For example, you're driving to the grocery store to get your normal groceries. You arrive at the store and you get a notification on your phone: "Milk." In other words, the Reminders app will trigger reminders for you based on your location. Maybe I'll finally remember to return that library book…
Camera - If you're like me, you tend to take a lot of pictures with your iDevice. Now, you can do basic crop & rotate edits to your pics right on your device. Also, they allowed the volume up button to also be a trigger for the camera. This a great improvement over having to press the screen.
Thoughts - While they have not yet said how much it will be to upgrade iDevices to iOS 5, my guess is that it will either be free for all, or free for iPhones and $10 for iPads & iPods. Hopefully it will be free for all, but even if it's $10, it is WELL worth the upgrade. For me, wireless sync and the notification system upgrade alone are worth the price of admission.
iCloud
This is the part that, I believe, will make people the most confused for the sole reason that it introduces a concept that, even to Sarah and me, is a bit confusing. It took me a few times reading the articles and watching the keynote to fully understand how iCould works and why it matters. Hopefully, I can explain it in a way that makes sense.
Let's start with basics. With your AppleID, you can have all of your mail, contacts, and calendars stored in the iCloud. Cool, but no different than what Google already offers. In addition to these three basics, iCloud will allow you to keep 5 gigs worth of documents and backups available to you wherever you want. For example, you are working on a presentation in Keynote (no word on good MS Office support yet) on your computer. You get to your presentation and realize you left your computer at home. No problem. If you have the right cable, you can plug your iPhone into the projector, and pull your presentation from the cloud. Cool. Further, your purchased music, apps, and books (i.e.: anything you've purchased from the iTunes store) are all backed up automatically so if you get a new device after yours is lost, stolen, etc., you can just log into the iCloud and get everything back.
And there are pictures. Now, you can automatically have up to 1000 pictures you've taken on your iDevice uploaded to iCloud. Then, when you're on your computer, you can download those pictures in iPhoto (no word on videos). Here's a practical example: You're taking a trip to, let's say, Prague. You want to make sure your pictures are saved somewhere safe, but you don't want to lug around your computer. Now, you can dump your pictures from your camera onto your iDevice, and upload them to the cloud when you have wifi. This way, everything is backed up and safe, and you don't need a computer.
Thoughts - For a lot of people, this may just add one more headache into the mix. I would not recommend most of the people reading this to be first adopters. I don't know if I will even try to tackle iCould at first. Honestly, Google handles my mail, contacts, and calendars really well, so I have no intention of moving those over to a new service (although I might take gimbeljeremy@me.com, just to be safe in case I want it down the road). The photo storing is nice, but I sync enough that I only see its value if I was to take a lot of pictures on my iPod Touch or if I was traveling and wanted to be safe about my photos. Yes, you can stream your photos stored in iCloud onto an Apple TV for easy viewing. But a single purpose like this just seems like a complicated labyrinth to deal with this early in its development. I am going to wait until other people figure it out before I tackle it too intensely.
iTunes in the Cloud
Another feature that's getting a lot of press is iTunes in the Cloud. It's a part of iCloud, but is different enough that it warranted a different section. Honestly, if all of this tech stuff seems too complicated, this will probably be too much to handle. If you don't want to learn what it's about, let me just tell you that this is something you don't need to worry about, because it's something you probably won't ever use. If you are interested in learning about it, though, and are willing to brave the complexities, by all means, keep reading.
Let's say you bought an album in the iTunes store. With iTunes in the Cloud, that album will not only download to the device from which it was purchased, but to all of your devices. Bought it on your mac? Now it will automatically download itself to your iPhone, iPad, etc., up to 10 devices. And you can choose which previously purchased songs you want to download to each device. The nice thing is that as long as your music is purchased in the iTunes store, it will sync for free across up to 10 devices forever (if you need to, you can always deactivate a device if you are getting rid of it so you can get that count back).
If, however, you have music not from the iTunes store (and let's face it, who doesn't?), for $25 a year, Apple will scan your library and match your songs to versions that are in the store, and then sync the iTunes store versions to your devices, up to 20,000 songs. Okay, that may have been confusing again, so I'll try an example. The first album I ever owned was the Hootie & The Blowfish album "Cracked Rear View." Of course, when I bought it, there was no such thing as the iTunes music store because there was no such thing as iTunes. Now, I can pay $25 for a service that will give that album the same treatment in the cloud as if I bought it from the iTunes store, meaning it will be backed up and will sync with all of my devices. Of course, less noble people might download songs illegally, and pay $25 a year to have the music industry's blessing to get the legal version.
Thoughts - If you're not going to back-up your computer and you don't plan on regularly syncing your iDevices with your computer, then iTunes Match might be a good investment. The ability to have purchased songs backed up and available to sync with all of your devices is nice, but all it does it take one step (plugging things into each other) out of the equation. For me, just like iCloud, I think it's too complicated to tackle right out of the gate. Plugging things in seems to work just fine for me now, and since I'm only syncing two devices (my MacBook Pro and my iPod Touch), the service doesn't really do me much good.
Do YOU need it? No. Will it make YOUR life easier? Probably not. But aren't you glad you read this so you can understand it a little better?
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