Apple WWDC – Lion, iOS5, iCloud

I just watched the WWDC coverage and I have to say it was all pretty damn cool. I don’t use a Mac so the Lion pieces weren’t all that interesting to me but the iOS5 updates and the iCloud components had me paying attention. iCloud syncs across multiple devices and multiple Operating Systems. You get 5GB free and your pictures, music, subscriptions and lots of others things don’t count toward that limit. Plus, it works on iOS5, Macs and PCs. Holy kick in the Dropbox Batman! Seems like Apple took a shot at Dropbox, Live, Amazon Cloud and lots of other apps in one mighty swoop.

And as I was discussing this with a friend, depending on how you set this up, your iDevices could in fact become Facebook. You could all subscribe to an iCloud account and whenever you update pictures everyone gets copies. That could be pretty interesting.

iTunes Match sounds pretty neat as well. Pay $25 a year and you can either upload your own music or get iTunes equivalents. I have to wonder though, how does Apple know you didn’t just rip that piece of music off the web?

I like what I see. Apple turned up the wick. They have new notifications that might put some Apple devs out of business and make ToDo apps obsolete. They took a huge shot at cloud storage services. I wonder how Dropbox will fair. The over the air update will be pretty useful. I think that takes the wind out of the sails for the argument that the iPad isn’t a PC.

I also like the fact that Apple sees desktop machines as just another device. I think we need more of this. I think Apple is really pushing out some neat and useful technology with this set of releases. Microsoft what do you say? Oh yeah, you’re hooked on Widgets…

Finally, the upgrade to Lion is $29. No physical media. Why in the hell can’t Microsoft do this? This would all but eliminate piracy. Who wouldn’t pay just $30 to upgrade all the machines in their house?