Apple announced Monday that the next version of its operating system, dubbed Lion OS X, will be available in July for $29, exclusively in the Mac App Store.
The $29 price tag is down from $129. Developers will get an early version today, Apple announced at during a Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote today.
Lion includes 250 new features, but CEO Steve Jobs singled out 10 for today's keynote, the most interesting of which focused on saving and sharing documents.
Resume brings your apps back to how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app. But for that one time you forget to save, Autosave will save everything in the background. If you zoom in on the title bar of your document, the title bar is now a menu. You can also revert to the last option, as well as lock your document so nothing will ever change it. To that end, Versions will save all versions of a document, much like Google Docs. A menu option allows you to browse all versions, like Time Machine, with a time scale. They're all live, you can switch between them, and even cut and paste between them.
With those docs secure, why not share them? Enter AirDrop. For as long as we've had computers, we've wanted to share them, Schiller said. AirDrop is a peer-to-peer, Wi-Fi protocol. Open a window near people running AirDop and drag the document to the other user. A dialog pops up asking the other person if she wants to download, and it downloads into the "Download" folder. For security, there is confirmation on both ends and the transfer is encrypted.
Also included in Lion is multi-touch, which will allow users to swipe through Web pages, as well as click with the mouse and drag and scroll. There are also full-screen apps so users can take advantage of every pixel, Jobs said. Apple touted this as a great way to look at photos via iPhoto. A three-finger swipe goes back to the desktop; swipe to the left and go back to the dashboard.
Mission Control, meanwhile, provides a birds-eye view of all documents, organized by the app it's running. There's a dedicated space for dashboard widgets, accessible via a single tap. Multiple desktop spaces are now intrgrated into Mission Control; click and create a new space and populate it by dragging windows onto it.
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, provided a demo of Safari on Lion.
"We don't need scroll bars anymore becase we can just push the content with our fingers," Federighi said.
Apple also talked up the Mac App Store, which launched in January. Phil Schiller dubbed it the "best place for purchasing and discovering software, much better than a physical store." With Lion, Schiller said, the Mac App Store is built right in, as are in-app purchases, push notifications, sandboxing, and auto updates.
Launchpad, meanwhile, provides a view of all installed app icons. A pinch gesture brings all apps on to your screen, no matter where they are. New apps downloaded from the App Store are added directly to Lauchpad, and there is the option to create folders.
Mail, meanwhile, has been completely revamped, Apple said. You can opt for a two- or three-column view. The design is optimzed for reading mail, with snippets built-in and a favorites bar across the top, Apple said. There are search suggestions, like is it a person? A subject? When you select one, it becomes a search token. A brand-new conversation view brings up messages and attachments and is compatible with those who don't have Lion. An upper left-hand button switches between two and three columns.
PCMag got a first look at Lion during Apple's October event, and again in February. At that point, Apple previewed never-before seen features, including AirDrop, a wireless file-sharing utility; a redesigned Mail app; Resume, which presents the OS and Apps in the exact state at shutdown; Versions, which allows app developers to implement a feature that saves multiple snapshots of any document being worked on; and AutoSave, which does what its name suggests, saving documents automatically.
Apple is not the only company showing off a new OS this week. At the D9 conference last week, Microsoft also showed off a preview of Windows 8, which also borrows heavily from mobile.
The $29 price tag is down from $129. Developers will get an early version today, Apple announced at during a Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote today.
Lion includes 250 new features, but CEO Steve Jobs singled out 10 for today's keynote, the most interesting of which focused on saving and sharing documents.
Resume brings your apps back to how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app. But for that one time you forget to save, Autosave will save everything in the background. If you zoom in on the title bar of your document, the title bar is now a menu. You can also revert to the last option, as well as lock your document so nothing will ever change it. To that end, Versions will save all versions of a document, much like Google Docs. A menu option allows you to browse all versions, like Time Machine, with a time scale. They're all live, you can switch between them, and even cut and paste between them.
With those docs secure, why not share them? Enter AirDrop. For as long as we've had computers, we've wanted to share them, Schiller said. AirDrop is a peer-to-peer, Wi-Fi protocol. Open a window near people running AirDop and drag the document to the other user. A dialog pops up asking the other person if she wants to download, and it downloads into the "Download" folder. For security, there is confirmation on both ends and the transfer is encrypted.
Also included in Lion is multi-touch, which will allow users to swipe through Web pages, as well as click with the mouse and drag and scroll. There are also full-screen apps so users can take advantage of every pixel, Jobs said. Apple touted this as a great way to look at photos via iPhoto. A three-finger swipe goes back to the desktop; swipe to the left and go back to the dashboard.
Mission Control, meanwhile, provides a birds-eye view of all documents, organized by the app it's running. There's a dedicated space for dashboard widgets, accessible via a single tap. Multiple desktop spaces are now intrgrated into Mission Control; click and create a new space and populate it by dragging windows onto it.
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, provided a demo of Safari on Lion.
"We don't need scroll bars anymore becase we can just push the content with our fingers," Federighi said.
Launchpad, meanwhile, provides a view of all installed app icons. A pinch gesture brings all apps on to your screen, no matter where they are. New apps downloaded from the App Store are added directly to Lauchpad, and there is the option to create folders.
Mail, meanwhile, has been completely revamped, Apple said. You can opt for a two- or three-column view. The design is optimzed for reading mail, with snippets built-in and a favorites bar across the top, Apple said. There are search suggestions, like is it a person? A subject? When you select one, it becomes a search token. A brand-new conversation view brings up messages and attachments and is compatible with those who don't have Lion. An upper left-hand button switches between two and three columns.
PCMag got a first look at Lion during Apple's October event, and again in February. At that point, Apple previewed never-before seen features, including AirDrop, a wireless file-sharing utility; a redesigned Mail app; Resume, which presents the OS and Apps in the exact state at shutdown; Versions, which allows app developers to implement a feature that saves multiple snapshots of any document being worked on; and AutoSave, which does what its name suggests, saving documents automatically.
Apple is not the only company showing off a new OS this week. At the D9 conference last week, Microsoft also showed off a preview of Windows 8, which also borrows heavily from mobile.
