MacDailyNews presents live coverage of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ WWDC 2011 keynote address

80 Comments

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address today, June 6th, at 10am PDT/ 1pm EDT.

During Jobs’ keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

MacDailyNews will offer live notes during Steve Job’ keynote right here on this page, so bookmark it and we’ll see you here just before 10am PDT/ 1pm EDT.

Live notes from Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ WWDC 2011 keynote address in reverse chronological order:

• Jobs thanks everyone for coming. End of keynote presentation.

• Jobs gives slideshow tour of the new North Carolina data center… Endless server racks in massive building…

• iTunes Match beats both Amazon on convenience, track quality, and price; scan and match tales minutes vs. what could take weeks; only Apple upgrades to 256Kbps AAC; US$24.99 flat rate.
• Any music iTunes Store doesn’t yet have, it uploads from your library. Subscription cost: $24.99 a year.
• iTunes Match upgrades tracks to 256Kbps AAC.
• Jobs: “This takes minutes, not weeks. If you have to upload your entire library to some service in the cloud, that could take weeks!”
• iTunes Match: Apple has 18 million songs now in the iTunes Store. Software scans your tracks and matches it up with those songs in the iTunes Store.

• iTunes in the cloud is available today as an iTunes 4.3 beta.
• iCloud stores your content, pushes it to all your devices, is integrated with all your apps, and it’s free.
• Jobs: “We want people to really see what this software can do, so we’re making it free.”

• iTunes in the Cloud supports 256Kbps AAC and up to 10 devices.
• Cue buys song on iPhone and it immediately appears on his iPad. (“More magic!” – MDN Ed.)
• Jobs: “in the future, you can flip a switch in iTunes that will send any song you purchase on iTunes to all your devices.”
• iTunes in the Cloud: Buy something on one device and it can be re-downloaded from iCloud to any other authorized devices. No additional charges.

• Cue snaps photo of toy Lightning McQueen from Pixar’s Cars on his iPhone and they instantly appear on his iPad and his Mac. (“Magical.” – MDN Ed.)
• Eddy Cue, Apple VP Internet Services, takes stage for demo.

• iCloud stores the last 1,000 photos. Photos are kept for 30 days. If you want to keep something permanently, just move it into an album. On the Mac or PC, all are stored permanently.
• Jobs on Photo Stream: “This may be my favorite iCloud app… On the Mac we built it right into iPhoto and on the PC, since they don’t have a photo app, we use the pictures folder… And we even built it into Apple TV. Apple TV talks directly to the PhotoStream service.”
• Photo Stream: Any photos taken on any device pushed to iCloud and then synced with other devices. Automatically. “It just works.”

• iCloud Storage APIs coming for devs to integrate into their own apps.
• Jobs: “Documents in the cloud really completes our document storage story. We can finally get rid of the file system. On iOS devices, you no longer have to worry about the file system. Documents in the cloud solves that problem for us.”
• Documents in the Cloud: If you create a Pages, Numbers or Keynote document, it automatically goes to iCloud and is sunced with all other authorized devices that use that app, iOS and/or Mac.

• WiFi only backups, includes App data, device settings, camera roll, and purchased music, books, photos and videos.
• App Store and iBookstore will also allow access to title you own via iCloud – across all devices

• iCloud will be free! (We got this one first, over a year ago, even before we knew the name “iCloud.” See: RUMOR: Apple to make MobileMe free – May 7, 2010 – MDN Ed.)

• MobileMe: “As of today this product ceases to exist.”
• Mail accounts will be (remain) me.com
• No ads.
• Calendars and contacts pushed, synced and shared among devices seamlessly

• MobileMe apps have been re-written from the the ground up to work with iCloud. Jobs: “MobileMe not our finest hour.”
• iCloud: “It just works.”
• iCloud is integrated with your apps, so everything happens automatically.
• iCloud stores your content, and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices.
• It’s become difficult to sync our media between various devices. “We’ve come up with a solution for this. We are demoting the PC to just a device and we’re moving the media hub to the cloud. Now everything is in sync without even having to think about it.”
• Digital Hub “worked well for a while, but recently it’s broken down,” says Jobs.
• iCloud: “We’ve been working about this for some time and we are really excited about it.”
• Jobs returns to stage: “You like everything so far?” (applause) “Well, I’ll try not to blow it.” (laughter)

• Devs get SDK today, so they can start building and iOS 5 ships “this fall.” iOS 5 supports every iOS device from the iPhone 3Gs and later.

• Wi-Fi back up to iTunes part of iOS 5, too.

• AirPlay mirroring lest you mirror your entire iPad right to the TV wirelessly (“Boom!” – MDN Ed.)

• Forstall on iMessage: “We’re building this on our new push notification system so we know how to scale this.”
• iMessage: Works on all iOS devices and includes delivery receipts, read receipts, typing indication, and works over both 3G and WiFi. Non-intrusive, like the new Push Notifications. Won’t interrupt an app in progress. iMessages are encrypted and pushed to iOS devices. And RIM’s half-CEOs both just messed their pants.

• Game Center features numerous imporvements: Friends of friends, Achievements, Purchase games from inside Game Center….
• 50 million Game Center users. Forstall: “To put that into perspective Xbox Live has been around for about eight years and they have around 30 million users.”
• Game Center: iOS is the most popular gaming platform on the planet. There are more than 100,000 game and entertainment titles in the App Store.

• You can now set-up iOS devices on the devices themselves, PC Free. Software updates are available over the air, too.
• There are so many people around the world without a PC who would like iOS devices, so…
• PC Free: Cuts the cable…

• New keyboard splits in half when you grab both sides with your thumbs (Will be great for iPad users – MDN Ed.)
• Built-in dictionary. System-wide. “All apps from the App Store can use it.”
• iOS 5 Mail app: Rich text, indentation control, message flagging, draggable addresses, search entire message, S/MIME

• iOS 5 Camera features: Optional grid-lines, in-camera pinch-to-zoom, editing with crop and rotate (Yes! – MDN Ed.), red-eye removal and enhance. Major improvements
• Camera: Dedicated camera button on iOS lock screen

• Reminders: To Do Lists that sync across iOS devices. With location, too, so if you move away without doing what your wanted to do, you’ll be reminded

• Tabbed browsing
• Reading List: Save stories to read later; syncs across iOS devices (if you save something on iPhone, you can read it later on iPad)
• Improved version of Safari Reader
• Safari: More than two thirds of mobile Web browsing is done on Safari (64% Safari, 27% Android, 9% Other)

• iOS 5 users can Tweet articles from Safari and videos from YouTube
• Twitter: iOS users send more than 1 billion Tweets a week. iOS 5 offers Twitter single sign-on, photo-integration, location integration; contacts integration

• Newsstand: Subscription publications (newspapers, magazines): Yours are automatically downloaded and placed on Newsstand on springboard. Looks like actual newsstand. Browser your subscriptions from there.

• Tap any Notfication and you’ll go to app that generated it. Tap again and it takes you back to Notification Center.
• Notifications are not persistent in iOS 5; They appear at the top of screen without interrupting app in use and auto-dismiss in a few moments
• Push Notifications: Notification Center collects all notifications. Swipe down from the top of screen to access
• iOS5 features more than 200 new features; Forstall will cover 10 today…

• Over $2.5 billion paid to App Store devs
• Over 425,000 apps in the app store; 90,000 of them made for iPad
• Over 130 million books downloaded via iBookstore
• Over 25 million iPads sold in first 14 months (and they could have sold more if they could’ve made them fast enough – MDN Ed.)
• Over 15 billion songs sold via iTunes Store; #1 retailer of music in the world
• Mobile installed base: iOS 44%, Android 28%, RIM 19%, Other 9%
• 200 million iOS devices now sold.
• iOS5: Scott Forstall takes the stage

–––

• Mac OS X Lion coming in JULY for US$29.99!!!
• Mac OS X Lion is a 4GB download, installs in place, for all your authorized Macs
• Mac OS X Lion will be available only from the Mac App Store
• Over 300 new APIs for devs in Mac OS X Lion (WIndows Migration, Resize from any Edge, Safari readling List, Lion Server add on…)
• Search in Mail is much advanced, much more granular versus the current version. Can use multiple criteria (TO, Date, Subject) in searches.
• Mail.app in Lion adds conversation view. All messages shown inline; shows messages from a single thread in a single view with attachments
• AirDrop: Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi. Lion users only. Auto discovery and setup. Confirm to send an receive. Fully encrypted transfers. Throw your thumb drives away.
• Quits pages in middle of document prep. Relaunches Pages and the document is exactly as he left it.
• Federighi demoing with Pages…
• Auto Save: Auto-saves documents in enabled apps; gives users many options
• Resume: Works system-wide to remember what app you were using and what you were doing with it. Pick up right where you left off
• Launchpad: Like iOS springboard for Macs; you can drag apps on top of each other to automatically create folders.
• Mac App Store built into Lion with In-App Purchases and Push Notifications, too
• Apple’s Mac App Store is now the #1 Channel for PC software. Sells more than Best Buy (#2), Walmart (#3), and Office Depot (#4).
• Schiller moves on to Mac App Store…
• Gestures for Mission Control and Spaces demoed
• Photobooth running in full-screen mode. New features let you put animations with live video, for example: Blue birds around your head for when you’re being (or knocked) silly. Face recognition, too.
• Lion users can swipe through Safari’s browsing history
• Two-finger swipes, left or right, moves back and forth between full-screen mode apps
• Pinch to zoom and/or double-tap to smart-zoom in or out, as in iOS
• iOS’s momentum scrolling come to Mac – designed for touch gestures
• Safari GarageBand, iTunes, iMovie, FaceTime and many more apps are full-screen mode capable in Lion
• Full screen apps for Mac OS X Lion
• Showing zoom via tapping, multi-finger swiping and scrolling…
• Lion and Multi-Touch Gestures… Craig Federighi to demo some Lion features…
• Schiller, “We now have over 54 million Mac users around the world and growing.”
• Mac has out-grown the PC industry every quarter for the last five years.
• Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, takes stage for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion demos
• Over 5,200 attendee this year. WWDC 2011 sold out in 2 hours.
• Steve Jobs takes the WWDC stage to standing ovation, thunderous applause
• Many kelly green-clad Apple employees are in attendance with “keynote” emblazoned on the backs of their shirts…
• Ladies and gentlemen, our presentation will begin shortly. Please silence cell phones…

– – –

Other sites offering live coverage today include:

• Ars Technica
• BGR
• CNET
• Engadget
• Technologizer
• TechzTalk
• Wired
• ZDNet

80 Comments

  5. “we have been trying to get rid of the file system for years”
    Really, I like having access to my files.

    I’ll reserve seeing before passing final judgement, but I think we have seen the reduction of OSX to the walled garden and this will be where I get off the train.

    Apple needs to stop dumbing down OSX.

    Design something any fool can use & only a fool will use it.

    Reply

    2. Umm, did you miss everything Steve said about how easy iCloud made it to *access files*?

      The point he’s making is that you should be able to access your files without having to stumble through the file system. It should be gotten rid of, as in, made no longer necessary.

      Do you also think operating systems with a windowing GUI “dumbed down” computers because they made it so people didn’t have to fumble around with a commandline interfece anymore?

      Reply

    3. When we learn something, we often want to gel it and not have to revisit it ever again. When the car was first under development, many resisted the change to automated fuel/air systems and then again resisted the move to computer controlled timing, valves, ignition etc.

      In computers, many resisted the change to optical drives from floppy drives and now many will oppose the move to storage on the cloud. We seem to fear that which we are not familiar with. Most of these are ex Windows users.

      Reply

      1. Not everything new is better.

        There are inherent problems with “the cloud”. Security is one. Despite any assurances Apple may offer, iCloud is not immune to hacking. Anything a man can make, another man can break… or hack, as the case may be.

        Is Apple going to reimburse, guarantee, or something, if iCloud is compromised and user data is exposed, stolen, damaged or destroyed?

        I doubt it.

        Better check the fine print on all the EULAs and/or Agreements that come with installing/using Lion/iCloud.

        In all likelyhood they will come with the standard legalese-ridden disclaimer that has appeared on software since the start of the PC era. Which, when translated into plain English, means that developers guarantee nothing, accept no responsibility of any kind for anything that may go wrong, and users assume all risk.

        Reply

  6. “iCloud stores your content in the cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your device. It automatically uploads it, stores it, and pushes it to all your devices.”

    Okay, see, Steve gets it. Every other tech company CEO thinks the cloud is going to replace local storage and turn computers back into a dumb terminals, which is so very stupid and clueless on so very many levels. But not Steve. Because he’s actually smart.

    He knows – as I know, and many of us know – that the cloud is only a good idea if it’s a COMPLIMENT TO LOCAL STORAGE. NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR IT.

    So to that end, Apple’s iCloud is basically just a sync tool. It syncs your data to all of your devices, automatically. That’s brilliant.

    And it’s also something that wouldn’t occur to the competition in a billion years because they have zilch for common sense. They’re probably going to keep riding the cloud-as-a-return-to-terminal-computing wave until they crash and burn horribly for it, at which point the survivors will pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and copy iCloud poorly without really understanding why people like it.

    God it’s so fun to watch Apple kick ass just because they have a clue and nobody else in the industry does. Keep on shining you glorious bastards.

    Reply

  9. John: “Sam, I hear your son and his wife are on an 18-day tour of the Far East.”
    Sam: “Oh yes. It’s day 8 and I believe they are in Singapore today.”
    John: “Must be having a pretty good time.”
    Sam: “Yup. Let’s see what they are up to today.”
    John (wondering if Sam is losing it): “Excuse me, did you say, um, today . . . ”
    Sam: “I sure did.”
    Sam turns on the TV, attached to the family’s Apple TV, presses PhotoStream, and there on screen are hundreds of pics his son and wife have been taking on their iPhones until just about an hour ago …..

    Reply

  10. I’m a pretty experienced iOS/Mac OS X user, but it’s going to take me a while to digest all the info in this WWDC keynote.

    My head hurts trying to decipher it all right now, but nothing a cold frosty one won’t cure…

    Reply

  13. • Mac OS X Lion will be available only from the Mac App Store.

    Of course. And as such ends the era of being able to buy a copy on CD and install it efficiently while offline. Too much anal control and bullshit, Apple! It’s one thing to offer your Mac Store as an option and quite another to force everyone to use it, then crow that it’s what everyone wants.

    • We are demoting the PC to just a device and we’re moving the media hub to the cloud.”

    Bzzt! Fail! I, like millions of others, will never accept or allow the offsite storage of all my personal data.

    And with these announcements I can safely say my next computer purchase will be a PC. Whether that’s Windows or Linux I haven’t decided yet.

    Reply

  14. This iCloud better be an option or my iPad is going up for sale. No f-ing way do I want any of my data or content pushed to the iCloud, for many different reasons !!!

    Reply

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