Late last night (2am AEST), a very frail looking Steve Jobs announced Apple’s biggest group of updates ever. By the looks of it, Apple users are one step closer to becoming those fat people in Wall-E who never had to leave their chairs.
Apple’s big gun is the iCloud. It is awesome because it wirelessly syncs all your Apple devices automatically. That means no more transferring any of your data from one device to another. Have you ever spent six hours moving a heap of photos or apps or porn business files from your laptop to your iPhone? The iCloud means you never have to do that again. Think of the time saved! And once a day, it will automatically back up any of your purchased music, apps, books, photos, device settings and app data.
The other major update is iOS 5 which boasts more than 200 new features for your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. As usual, Apple phrases the iOS 5 capabilities in the most romantic staring-into-the-horizon way possible: “taking a mobile operating system that was already years ahead of anything else and moving it even further ahead.” WELCOME-TO-THE-FUTURE-THIS-IS-SOME-BEYOND-2000-STYLE-SHIT ALERT.
Here are some highlights…
iMESSAGE
Apple continues the quest to make Telcom companies obsolete by introducing this undeniably awesome service that enables Apple device-owners (iPad, iPhone or iPod touch) to send unlimited messages (text, image, video, etc). For free. Think of it like BBM for Apple. Track your messages with delivery receipts and optional ‘read’ receipts and you can see when someone is typing (like iChat). Even start a conversation on your iPhone and pick up where you left off on another device.
NOTIFICATION CENTRE
This nifty little program enables you to get any and all of your notifications in one place – emails, texts, friend requests, tweets, calendar alerts. You’ll be as efficient Pepper Potts without the impossibly handsome asshole boss.
PHOTOS/ CAMERA
Now you can do all your post-production work – crop, rotate, enhance, and remove red-eye – without leaving the Photos app. You can also open the Camera app right from the Lock screen. Use grid lines, pinch-to-zoom gestures, and single-tap focus and exposure locks to compose a picture. The volume-up button will now be used to snap your photo too- just like a regular camera. And as with everything else, with iCloud any photos taken using your iPhone will be automatically sent to all your other devices.
TWITTER
With the new update, Twitter is completely integrated with all the apps on your iPhone or iPad. Sign in once and you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube or Maps. Want to mention or @reply to a friend? Contacts applies your friends’ Twitter usernames and profile pictures. So you can start typing a name and Steve Jobs’ll does the rest.
READING LIST
The Safari iOS 5 update includes the ‘Reading List’ function which lets you save interesting articles to peruse later- iCloud keeps this list updated across all devices. This could deem ‘Instapaper’ useless for a lot of people.
…. and much, much more… The iCloud will launch in September along with iOS 5. It’ll be free with the purchase of any iOS device, and you’ll get 5GB of storage free and it’ll cost $29.99 per year for unlimited storage space.
Thoughts?
Via www.apple.com and The Cult Of Mac
