There were literally hundreds of new things – expected and unexpected – in Apple’s announcements the other day at its annual WWDC developer’s conference.
There was a lot about iOS5 – the soon-arriving next version of Apple’s Operating System for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch. A lot of nice improvements, which do not, sad to say, include support for Flash.
Probably the most significant announcement, which extends far beyond mobile platforms, is iCloud.
You’ve probably heard the word “Cloud”. It’s a big buzz word that has at least two very different meanings. I’ll discuss “Cloud Hosting” in another post.
In Apple’s case, it refers to any service or capability that is platform independent. Meaning you can access the same service, flies or applications from different computers or devices. Often this just refers to what is known as “SaaS” – Software as a Service, meaning you subscribe with a monthly or yearly fee, and access the program on the Internet through a login. That would be instead of buying and installing it on your computer.
The huge big deal about iCloud is it is completely invisible to the user. It is built in at the application level.
You’ll be able to access your iTunes on different devices. And they will know what you were last doing on another device. So you could be listening on your iPhone to a tune, walk into your house and pick up where you left off on your computer without any effort on your part.
As Steve Jobs said repeatedly in talking about this at the conference, “It just works.”
This continues the long-term philosophy of Apple of making things easy for users, and leapfrogs Apple over Google and others in this area.
Article about the announcement:
But I still want Flash on my iPhone.
