Apple has already stated they will discuss the following:

Mac OS 10.7 Lion
iOS 5
iCloud

Plenty is already known about Leopard but the others have been discussed only in terms of rumors from press to blogs.

Part of iCloud is supposed to be a music streaming service from Apple to stream your own tunes. The latest rumor is it will cost $25 per year. That amount seems low and may not even make most people think twice. For me however, the service, as rumored, doesn't seem like it's worth any more than $0 however.

I already have all my music on my network. I can already take as much as I need with me. If I use internet bandwidth to stream the same music I'm already going to be paying for the pipes. Paying Apple (or Google) only to increase my expenditure with my ISP to play music I've already got locally just doesn't make any sense. It's simply not something I find compelling at all.

Right now I don't actually have any mobile data, having had to cancel the iPad plan I was using with my iPhone as it stopped working. The tech department at Bell couldn't give me an explanation and tried a few things to get it going, but all I ever got was connection failure messages on the phone. It's not worth it to me to pay one of the carriers for an iPhone-specific plan for voice, let alone data. It's just way too much money per month compared to my actual usage. And if I were to focus on using more simply to try and justify the expense, it would probably backfire and I'd only end up having to spend more for even greater limits.

I'm still interested to see what might become of MobileMe and whether or not it will be free, even though I might not be able to take advantage of it from my iPhone.

The only 100% solid thing we know right now is that Apple has something called iCloud. Everything else is just typical internet echo chamber garbage. I'll wait till Monday to begin to even think any more about it, with solid information from the source. The name to me though does point to something bigger then just music, and likely a replacement for MobileMe at a minimum.

I am really curious about iOS 5. Hoping to see some integration features between the iPad and iPhone.

Lion, [NDA censored]

I would love to see dramatic changes to iOS. But I don't expect them. At most, I expect a new notification system and a couple of other tweaks.

The last time Apple made a really big dramatic change to this type of (existing) software was moving from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. That's the kind of change I'd like to see in iOS frankly. At least on the superficial level (UI, apps and maybe a few frameworks) But I don't expect it will ever happen. Even though there are enough areas open to improvement that could substantiate a major overhaul.

iOS: The notification system on Android is certainly an excellent feature. It would be amusing to see how Apple tries to address the same problem. Similarly, Android's replaceable keyboards allow for all kinds of interesting innovation that's closed to iPhone users. Will Apple allow keyboard replacement?

Lion: I'm mostly curious what Apple will charge and whether it will even be possible to buy a DVD. There's some evidence that upgrading from the regular client to a server will happen based on an app-store purchase.

iCloud: The big question is whether Apple tries to go after Pandora. $25/year is cheaper than a high-quality Pandora subscription.

Notification wise, I wasn't real thrilled with how Android handled it when I did my evaluation last summer. It was different then iOS for sure, but it had it's own mixed bag of pros and cons. While I haven't personally used a WebOS device outside a store demo, their approach seems to be a bit better then the Android method. Coming in from the bottom, resizing the app if needed, and giving a better at a glance view, without being the modal dialog iOS uses.

I also didn't enjoy having to play notification janitor on Android either. Though that is probably more due to bad use by the developers, including the stock Mail app not clearing new mail notifications if they were read on another system, and Gowalla using a pull system vs push.

I haven't played with WebOS either. I agree that the "janitorial" issue with Android can be a bit annoying, but at least all these damn apps competing for your attention get segregated to a place where they're all collectively easy to ignore.

I've used WebOS for the last 23 months, and IMHO, there isn't a better notification mechanism on any mobile OS. I have no idea why Android and iOS haven't just copied the way it works, at least as much as they can with their different approaches to multitasking.

Unfortunately, HP's roadmap for WebOS phones hasn't exactly rocked anyone's world, so I'm going to definitely consider switching to (probably) Android or (maybe) iOS after my contract is up next month. None of the Android phones have wowed me either, and I'm not an iOS fan at all, but I just don't see HP committing the resources to WebOS phones now that they're trying to do the tablet thing, and committing to another two years with a Pre 3 or something just doesn't make sense.

Well, Apple did hire the Palm guy who did their notification system.

I still think that little resources devoted by HP may continue to produce something better than 10x the resources devoted by Google. Android will continue to change more rapidly than any other OS IMO. But I also think it's going to continue to suck because Google just doesn't have any design talent. Nor really the inclination to make anything very consistent nor optimized. I'm not sure why that is.

As much as I dislike a lot of what Apple has left off the table in iOS, I don't think I'd own a smart phone at all if it had to be Android-based.

Do you have some sort of macro that automatically posts these little Google hate-ons for you?

Nope. But then again, the more things change for Android, the more they stay the same. Don't get me wrong, most Android devices are still better than any Blackberry - now there's an OS that was truly designed by the incompetant. But hey, I'm still pissed at Apple for stagnation, so I really hope to see something truly interesting next week. While they maintain a popular platform, they're starting to get a little boring as software innovators and definitely showing much less polish than they used to in some respects. Bloody iPod app still doesn't support compilation or any multi-artist albums, including albums with guest artists on any track. Specifically, Compilation tag, and Album Artist (equivalent) tags and associated sorting and display logic.

One thing I forgot to mention, we'll probably see some announcement that Apple has sold about (or over) 200 million iOS devices next week. They were already close in March according to information from their Samsung lawsuit. With iPhone and iPod touch combined, they've already got more units in the market than Nintendo's DS series.

While I agree that WebOS probably has the best notification system, I don't think there's any argument to be made that the notifications on iOS are far inferior to the way Android handles it. Yes, I suppose there's a bit of a janitorial aspect to the notification shade, but at least it's out of the way and doesn't interrupt what I'm doing. The iOS method is just horrible. I hope for my wife's sake that they do something about it in the next revision.

I have a few issues with the shade system, but personally I really like it. Though Tom, I understand how irritating it would be with your email to still have the notification there if you've checked it on another computer. Does it do that if you're using IMAP? I've only ever used GMail, and the notifications go away if I check my mail using the web site.

Yeah, but how many of those 200M iOS gadgets are still funftional?

My niece is responsible for killing at least three.

Glenn, the same can be said for NIntendo DS systems. But yeah, I suspect a number of them are dead or retired. Even if we say 1/4 which I think is pretty high, that's still 150M left. It's an interesting stat, but not the end game of course. I'm not sure Apple really cares either so long as they maintain an upward trend.

It came to mind because of a few things that are being handled differently right now. Apple doesn't normally pre-announce products like iCloud and they have never broken down the iPod Touch numbers before that lawsuit filing. It made me reflect back to a thread last year where Matt and I discussed Nintendo DS and iPhone/iPod numbers. I think we were up to around 50k iOS devices which was probably a bit low, but even still, 200M is quite a milestone. Microsoft is celebrating 55M XBOX360 units right now for instance - which are also on an uptick after 6 years.

So who wants to take a crack at breaking down all of Apple's new announcements? In no particular order:

iOS 5

- looks like they broadly borrowed from Android's notification system

- no more need for a computer; everything can sync to the cloud (but only the iCloud)

- integrated Twitter (perhaps a precursor to a future iOS 6 Intent system like Android has had forever)

- integrated support for offline "reading later", basically a clone of Instapaper; notably includes stripping out of advertisements and such, which will honk off many web site providers


OS X 10.6 (Lion)

- only available as $29.99 download from the online store (but once purchased can be applied to all of the Macs on the same account; unclear whether there's any sort of enterprise license)

- Time Machine even when you're not connected to your backup drive (hourly snapshots)

- souped up virtual window management (all kinds of ways of seeing lots of apps or a single full-screen app)

- lots more gesture support (to the point that you now really want an Apple Trackpad, and it kills me that they don't sell a USB version)


iCloud

- $25/year for a service reminiscent of my.mp3.com's Beam-It service (sued out of existence in 1999 or thereabouts), where it recognizes all of the tunes you've got locally and then offers them to you online on any of your devices. What it doesn't give you is access to anything you haven't paid for. This is impressive.

- 5GB of free storage for cloud sync of damn near anything: pictures, address book, and a free <[email protected]> email service

- no apparent way to set up your own "cloud" server; you have to use Apple's service (even if I'd really much rather use Google)


I didn't watch any of the videos. This is all just my synopsis of Apple's web site. What gets me is Apple seems to be tying their devices closely to iCloud. Heaven forbid there should be standards about these sorts of things, such that I could use my own server or a Google server as my sync location. (Or maybe it's secretly in there...). What impresses me is that Apple has resurrected the Beam-it service from 1999. I wonder if they did the security better than the original service.

I will reserve judgement on Lion until I use it, but I, for one, do not welcome IOSization of OS X. If it's just the UI glossy layer that gets unified between the two, I can probably live with that, but if they start taking away the ability to get under the hood and use it like a real computer, I'm checking out.

I see the cloud music / iTunes Match thing as Apple opening up the walled garden just long enough to suck you and your content in, then closing it behind you. Yeah, you can go get your MP3s elsewhere, but if you do, Apple's just going to "upgrade" you to AAC 256k whether you like it or not. Eventually, everyone's just going to fall in line with buying from Apple to avoid the hassle. I wonder who will be the first to release a tool that defeats Apple's "matching" algorithm (so that the files fail the match and are therefore imported into your library as-is) without adversely affecting sound quality...

The one thing that seems to differentiate the Apple thing from MP3.com (which I used back in the day) is that MP3.com was streaming your collection, whereas the Apple iCloud thing is (from what I've been able to gather) just pushing the files around to all of your devices. There are pros and cons to each approach, but if they don't have a streaming option, I would hope they'd add one in the future.

I'm not sure what the "upgrade" will do if your tunes are ripped at higher quality. All of mine are in Apple Lossless, for example. If Apple "upgraded" me to 256kbit/sec compressed audio, I wouldn't be amused.

On the other hand, if all 40k tracks I have in my home computer could suddenly be available on everything else without any trouble, that might be interesting. It would be even better if they supported the iTunes app on Android. Yeah, that'll be the day.

Today has been very unproductive, with all the Apple stuff, along with E3 news, and NHL Stanley Cup games. Finally finished watching the Apple keynote, and in no particular order, my thoughts on iOS 5:

The new notifications with the pull down drawer do appear at first to be a pure copy of Android, but these are the differences I noticed:

• Incoming notifications are larger. iOS already reserves the right to double size the status bar at the top, and it looks line the new notifications will be doing the same. For me, this should keep incoming SMS messages readable at a glance in the car, without the distraction of either dismissing a modal dialog (iOS), or squinting to read a quick flash on a small status bar (Android).
• Widgets also live in the pull down "Notifications Center, or at least stocks and weather. No announcements at the keynote if any of that is accessible to other apps for putting their own stuff there, or if it's just reserved for Apple baked in apps.
• Instant access off the lock screen to any app that generated a notification. Stock Android doesn't offer this, but I know Samsung's skin (unless disabled by AT&T) offered similar for some things, by having users move different puzzle pieces to an unlock slot.

iMessage is a big shot at RIM with their Blackberry Messenger service. I've heard this is amazingly popular with kids that moved to Blackberry once the Sidekicks died off. Good to see it's also heading to the non phone iOS devices too, and with continuous client feature that lets you change devices without losing message history or state. I switched away from Adium/BeeJive to Trillian for continuous client, and it's awesome once you have it.

Reminders, about time. The lack of a todo list was always an odd gap with iOS, and they made sure to take it a step beyond basic todo lists. It's also integrated with location, allowing a reminder to pop up when you either first arrive at a location, or when you leave.

Camera, instant access from the lock screen is a welcome feature. And they added the ability to use the volume up button as a physical shutter. Glad to see Apple do this, since it's a backtrack from when they banned an app off the App Store for doing the same. No idea if this is locked to Apple, or if developers can now also do this.

Safari, finally proper tabs on the iPad. This was one thing I noticed, umm, "Browser" on the Xoom doing better then iOS Safari. They are also bringing over the reader functionality from the desktop (I use this all the time, especially on the annoying story broken into 10 pages sites). Reading list may also be nice, but I've already transitioned over to Flipboard + Google Reader with stars for this for now. The syncing between devices might win me over though for sites not in my Google Reader setup.

PC Free, good to see. No longer will Apple need to activate devices in the store by having people hook them to a store Mac, it will now just start working, pretty much like every other smartphone or tablet. Wireless syncing will also be a nice addition.

New gestures on the iPad. I've been using these in iOS 4.3 already, and they are handy. Looks like iOS 5 is officially bringing these out. I pretty much never touch the home button now, but would feel weird if these moved to the iPhone. Not sure what they will do there if the goal is to get rid of the home button.

Whatever I think about Apple's copying of Android (which come on, they did), I sincerely hope you're not reading on your phone while in the car unless you're at a stoplight or pulled over. If you are, please don't drive in the DC area, we have enough of that already. Thanks.

*edit*
Another quick thought: I like the 180 on the camera shutter button. Less than a year ago they pulled Camera+ for daring to do that. Now it's a feature

And my thoughts on iCloud:

Overall, I'm pretty impressed here. I'm not a fan of moving everything to web apps at this time, and it seems Apple agrees. They are viewing the cloud as a service to enhance apps, vs trying to get you to also run your apps via a web browser. Apple's take on this is that the PC is no longer the hub for your personal content, instead it's just another spoke, with the hub being the cloud now.

The first big point is that iCloud is free. No fees at all, beyond the cost of a device that runs iOS 5 or OS X Lion. And no ads either. I understand and respect that Google is an ad company and has to make money somehow, but I still dislike seeing ads in my personal stuff like e-mail, photos, or other things. Knowing that part of the cost of my hardware is going to pay for this service is fine by me.

5GB initially doesn't sound like a lot, but that 5GB is only for mail, contacts, calendars, documents, and possibly iOS backups. Photo Stream, iTunes content, apps, and books do not count against the space.

Photo Stream is interesting, in that it's kinda like a EyeFi card. Any photo I take on my iPhone is then also available on my iPad, and appears in iPhoto for importing to my permanent library. Apple has some limits here, any iOS device will only hold 1,000 photos before dumping the oldest to avoid taking over all the available space. And the iCloud servers will only hold photos for 30 days. I like this approach though, as it means I can still retain my master library locally, and still get benefits of the cloud. I personally don't like the idea of uploading my backlog of 12 years worth of photos to some cloud service.

iTunes in the cloud, I'll have to try it out to see what I think. $25 a year for unlimited music storage sounds pretty tempting. I've got a lot of music not in the iTunes store, so I may be making heavy use of this as an easy way to have my music collection at work without having to stream it from home.

iOS backups to the cloud will be nice, and will put iOS in front of the pack for "I just broke my phone, and need a new one back in the same state ASAP". From what I understand, the Google sync feature with Android is not 100% of the contents of the device, this iOS feature will be.

iCloud API will also be nice, since it means 3rd party apps also get to store all their stuff in the cloud and sync to other devices automatically. Dropbox was quickly becoming the way to do this on iOS, but not every app supported it. With a system level API and a free service, the odds are much higher that this will just be the way things work. Looking forward to seeing things like game save states move between my iPad and iPhone automatically, similar to Steam Cloud on the PC/Mac.

And now a reply post.


I only would do this when the iPhone was in a car mount, and I was using it for GPS. I don't actively text while driving, but being able to read incoming messages even at a glance allow me to know if it's time to pull over to respond to something immediately, or keep going. Such is the life of being on call. Thankfully now that the new system isn't modal, I don't have to touch the phone at all to resume viewing my GPS route info.


I'm not going to say much here since I am technically covered by a Lion NDA, but I do agree with your checking out part. My personal opinion is that Apple won't likely kill off the under the hood power user stuff anytime soon, especially with their continued interest in the high end video production market. Final Cut X was a good reassurance that Apple has some stake planted in the pro field still. I do see them slowly moving the defaults of the system to be more and more consumer friendly, based on what they learn from the iOS side. The iCloud document syncing for Pages, the auto save, and versioning all speak of features for general consumers to make the experience easier, but at the same time adds some tools for power users. I already have used Time Machine as a sort of VCS feature for a few things, having it baked in properly will be even better. I can even see a day where Apple disallows installing apps except from the App Store, but there will likely be a setting somewhere to turn this restriction off. Out of the box the common consumer will likely not care, and they will benefit too since this closes the malware problem off (well, mostly, I know no system can ever be 100% secure). And for those of us who care, we have one switch to flip. Similar to side loading applications on Android today. Default is off, but it's in there to turn on.


As for the 256kb AAC part, I really don't care (though I understand others do). To me, they sound just the same as 320kbit MP3 (my old standard). At least the "upgrade" isn't going to transcode your existing files into the AAC 256kbit file, instead it's just a copy of their AAC created from (in theory) a master lossless source. With my collection, I'm expecting a lot to not match, as I have a lot of odd music in my collection that has never really been sold directly. Things like soundtracks ripped from games back when they used CD Audio and such. The lack of streaming though does seem odd to me.

I only quickly read Engadget's coverage of the keynote last night. Was I incorrect to think that the fee was only if you anted to use the iTunes Match feature? In other words, you could still do iTunes music in the cloud without paying a dime.

Sorry, but we're just going to fundamentally disagree on this. I didn't accuse you of texting and driving, I accused you of reading texts while driving, which I still consider dangerous. Reading a text is very different from following GPS directions.

I don't know about iOS, but there are several apps on Android that will read incoming texts to you, some that note when you're in a car dock. I'm sure there are apps like this on iOS. I strongly encourage you to install one.

*edit*
And trust me, I know what "life on call" is like. I'm out on the road all day, but if I get a message that I have to read, I pull the car over.

You are correct, the $25 fee is only for the iTunes Match piece. If your only source of music is the iTunes store, or that's the only music you want access to again via the Apple cloud, then the cost is $0.

How do you know if you have to read it, without taking a glance at it, first?

Okay, I'll amend that: if I'm expecting messages that need to be read or responded to, I pull over. Otherwise I simply wait until I get where I want to go.

If this service plays iTunes files instead of our own, what does it do about tags? I use some tag information for my dynamic playlists, which is mostly how I listen to music. If I ended up getting copies without my tag information, it would really diminish the usability of my iPod/iPhone/iPad.

I thought about this too. Augmenting/replacing the tag info with user-supplied tags wouldn't be a hard technical problem to solve on Apple's end, but they're not known for making things very flexible or customizable. It wouldn't shock me if they just said "sorry, you want cloud music, you get stock tags", at least in the beginning.