Lion in July, iOS 5 and iCloud "coming this fall"
by Volker Weber
Impressive updates from Apple today:
- Mac OS 10.7 Lion ships in July as an upgrade from 10.6. $30 or 24 € for all your Macs. Download and install through App Store.
- iOS 5 "coming this fall" for iPhone 3GS and up, all iPads, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen. Can be activated and operated without PC/Mac. Syncs with all your devices over the air. Incremental updates OTA.
- Free iCloud replaces Mobile Me. Adds numerous features, including photo streaming to all your devices. Beta for iOS 4.3 today, shipping with iOS 5 in the fall.
- "iTunes in the Cloud" lets you match your CD rips and upload your own tracks for $25 a year. Available today with iTunes 10.3.
iOS 5 adds numerous features that require third party apps right now. iMessages is like BlackBerry Messenger. Twitter integrates, but not Facebook. New Reminder function does todo lists with location alarms. Notification services akin to Android, and the list goes on and on.
Comments
I think it's a good thing that Apple took a hint from Android regarding notifications despite that this will result in them being called copycats by zealots. I just hoped however that they had somehow improved the feature to raise the bar, not just catch up.
The Twitter integration is lame as compared to Android's intents.
Interesting that the share price actually dipped for Apple - there is now an _expectation_ that they should deliver something like a new iphone/ipad/iTunes store every few months, or they disappoint the money people.
They've built themselves a very high bar to jump each time.
The day after a keynote has traditionally been a good day to buy stock.
After using an Android device for a month now, these updates feel kind of obvious. There are other nice things about the droidOS that Apple should copy ... if not for the customers than at least for developers.
And one more thing: postponing the release of newer hardware to the fall of this year, caused me (among other things) to now have an Android phone ... it's not a smart move to make early buyers wait for a new version with their contracts running out in the next few months. They are probably popular enough now, but some of these first-to-buy-3Gs-users might be looking for something new and more exciting than an iPhone4 now ;-)
Don't worry too much about Apple. They sell all the stuff they make.
With Lion being a download it seems the time has finally come to move from Telekom DSL 2000 to Unitymedia. Btw, with Lion being a download, what will happen to the family license packs?
Gone for good. Pay once, install on all your Macs.
@Sebastian I was one of those early iPhone 3GS buyers, and mine is still happily doing its thing. I wouldn’t buy an iPhone 4 true, but an Autumn release for a next-gen iPhone doesn’t concern me to be honest. When the time comes I’ll see if it warrants an upgrade or not.
(And given how well devices sell for them, I don’t think Apple are too concerned either!)
Even the download possibility would never have me back on a contract with Unity. Took me two years to get rid of mine!
@Katherina Anything to be aware of? Some colleagues of mine use it without trouble.
My friends and my personal experiences with UnityMedia were negative in terms of customer support _after_ the contract is closed and getting out of the contract again. I too moved from Telekom to Tele2 and _happily_ back to Telekom. No more worries since then.
@ Oliver: Watch the minimum period of the contract, and the termination terms. Moving to a place where you have no use of their service is not a reason to terminate the contract...
Does anyone know how the algorithm for iTunes Match will work, i.e. on what characteristics the matching will done? Tags in the audio files? Shazam-style matching of the audio pattern?
