Apple prices Mac OS X 10.7 Lion at $30, coming next month

Apple today announced that Mac OS X version 10.7 Lion will be available in July as a download from the Mac App Store for $30.00 (only as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard). The eighth major release will add more than 250 features and 3,000 developer APIs to the company's desktop operating system. Mac OS X Lion Server will require Lion and will also be available next month from the Mac App Store for $50.00.
As expected, the OS will not be available for purchase in retail stores on a physical optical disc. The download will weigh in at around 4GB, or around the size of a typical DVD.
Lion adds new multitouch gestures and animations that let you interact directly with content on the screen. New gestures include momentum scrolling, tapping or pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, and swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps (read a full preview of OS X Lion here).

The addition of system-wide support for full screen apps means developers can take advantage of the entire display. With a single click, your app fills the display and you can swipe from one window to another, between full screen apps, or back to your Desktop, Dashboard, or Spaces without ever leaving full screen. Apple has updated its iWork and iLife apps, as well as Safari, iTunes, Mail, FaceTime, and others, to take advantage of full screen apps.
Apple has also added Mission Control, which combines Exposé, full screen apps, Dashboard, and Spaces into one unified experience for a bird's eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps and your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a tap.
With Lion, the Mac App Store is now built-in, so you can buy apps with your iTunes account, download, and install them. Apps automatically install directly to Launchpad (a new home for all your apps), and with Lion's release, the Mac App Store will be able to deliver smaller "delta" app updates and new apps that can take advantage of features like In-App Purchase and Push Notifications.
Lion includes a redesigned Mail app with a new widescreen layout and built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2010. The new Conversations feature groups related messages into a scrollable timeline while the improved search feature suggests matches by person, subject, and label as you type.
"The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said in a statement. "The best version of OS X yet, Lion is packed with innovative features such as new Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, and Mission Control for instantly accessing everything running on your Mac."

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Apple unveils iCloud synchronization service at WWDC

Apple's iCloud service is perhaps the company's most interesting announcement today at WWDC. Long rumored as a music streaming service, Apple's take on cloud computing is better described as a synchronization platform and only a fraction of it involves music. Starting with iOS 5, many of Apple's native applications will support iCloud, facilitating the automatic synchronization of your contacts, calendar, mail, documents, photos, music, books, apps and backups.
Such content is bounced to Apple's new data center in rural North Carolina and shared between your other devices. For instance, if you take a picture, the image will be automatically uploaded to your iCloud account and downloaded to your iPad and MacBook. Many iCloud-enabled applications have their own unique twists -- such as sharing calendar data with your spouse -- but the music-specific portion of iCloud is particularly fascinating compared to the competion.
Instead of being a separate music subscription service, iCloud essentially augments the functionality of Apple's existing iTunes platform. Along with offering access to previously purchased music across your hardware, the service will automatically download newly purchased songs on up to 10 devices. Additionally, for $24.95 a year, Apple will offer a service called "iTunes Match," which will let you import non-iTunes songs and download them across all your devices.

Although it might seem pricey, iTunes Match presents several immediate benefits. Unlike competing cloud storage services, iTunes Match can scan your entire library and compare it against some 18 million songs in Apple's database. Those that are matched will become immediately available for download as if you've purchased them via iTunes, cutting out the entire process of uploading the files and automatically upgrading your lower quality songs to 256kbps AAC files.
We think many users will appreciate iTunes Match, even if they only sign up for one year to import a bulk of their library. Songs not available in Apple's database will have to be manually uploaded to your iCloud account if you want to sync them across your devices, but this doesn't cost anything. Apple provides 5GB of free storage -- just like Amazon -- but pictures and iTunes songs don't count against this limit and we imagine data can be cleared once it's done syncing.
It's worth noting that iCloud will replace Apple's current $99 MobileMe service. Besides iTunes Match, all other aspects of iCloud will be available to users free of charge. That said, we would expect Apple to eventually introduce paid storage capacities beyond 5GB. Although iCloud won't be available in its entirety until this fall, you can experience a beta version of the music portion with iOS 4.3.3 (released last month -- check your Store settings) and iTunes 10.3 (released today).

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