Performance Artists at the Gate

A colorful group of dancers greeted some 5,200 Apple software developers who lined up starting about three hours ahead of Steve Jobs’ keynote address to start the 2011 WWDC conference at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Apple introduced the latest version of its Unix-based PC operating system, Lion, which takes performance capabilities to new levels. Lion interconnects natively with Apple’s new iCloud, which also connects the mobile OS, iOS5, for the same purposes.

CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, suffering from serious health problems for the last several years, looked and sounded a little weak but nonetheless was in good spirits for the introduction of all the new Apple software. He introduced several of his lieutenants, who then detailed most of the news.

Touch capabilities are a key feature of Mac OS X Lion. For example, users can pinch to zoom in on photos as they would on an iPad or iPhone.

A new feature called NewsStand enables users to subscribe to and save daily, weekly or monthly publications in a special place, so that bookmarks can easily be used to keep your place, should you have to leave in the middle of a story. Editions are automatically updated each time they become available.

Some of the new photo editing features in Lion include fun distortions like “Big Eyes.” This shot was taken onstage at WWDC and immediately edited for all to see.

There are now a lot more controls in Lion for saving various versions of documents. The latest one will be the one available for sharing, but all previous versions also will remain available if needed. Artwork from previous version can be copied into newer one if needed.

All of this is automated, Apple SVP Phil Shiller explained. Users don’t have to think about saving previous versions of document, photos or others, because the software takes care of it automatically.

Lion will be made available for download through Apple’s AppStore only—no more discs needed for installation. It’s about a 4GB download and only one license needs to be bought for all of one person’s Apple devices.

Now, as soon as a photo is taken, it can be edited and freshened up on the spot, saving time for users.??í

For example, even color corrections can be done on the fly in the new iOS 5 on an iPhone or iPad.

The new version of the iOS will work in both 3G and WiFi and for iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 4 and iPod Touch third and fourth generations.

iCloud connects all Apple iOS devices by backing up all documents as they come into the device and making copies of those available on all other devices owned by the user. This includes photos and music from the AppStore, too.

iCloud will be doing a lot of the thinking and saving for many users by the time it is available this fall. It will push calendar changes to all iOS devices a user owns, keeping them synced at all times. This will be great for groups with shared calendars.

It will be hard for users to actually lose anything with the iCloud and, of course, that’s what it’s all about.

When you take a photo with an iPhone, it will get stored on the device first, then transmitted to the Apple cloud—then to an iPad or iPod Touch, if you have one.??í The originals are all in one place (the iCloud)—just made available on all those devices when you need the content.