Steve Jobs Unveils iCloud

Today at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a new tools for iOS and cloud computing.

According to the iBooks presentation at the conference, users have downloaded 130 million books from iBookstore.

Below, we live-blogged the event, collecting different analysis of the presentation as it unfolded…

3:00: for $24.99 a year, Apple will match your ripped iTunes music in the cloud, backing up all your songs for that flat fee.

2:52: iCloud is automatic and free for everyone with iOS 5 update. MacRumors: “5GB of free storage for mail, docs, backups. Purchased music, apps, and books don’t count towards that.” This will be serious competition for companies like Evernote, Instapaper, and Dropbox.

2:47: iBooks, iTunes, and Calendars all included in this new cloud sync.

2:34 Will also work for Pages, syncing your writing in the cloud: “Can edit a document in pages, gets pushed to iCloud, then edit on iPad … Pages document automatically updated and stored in the cloud.

2:23: Steve Jobs comes out to talk about iCloud. After the many bugs of MobileMe on Apple devices, the company has created a whole new system–killing MobileMe. Gizmodo: “You make a new contact, it’s pushed up to iCloud and then back down to all your devices.”

2:20 iOS also includes wireless syncing with your iTunes. MacRumors: “When your device is charging at night, it finds iTunes and syncs”

2:12: Introduces new messaging service: “For all iOS5 customers on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch. You can shoot text, photo, videos, contacts and group messages. Pushed to all of your iOS5 devices. Plus there’s delivery receipts, and it’ll be securely encrypted.devices.”

2:09: iPhone and iPads can now be configured wirelessly: “software updates are now over the air … setup and activate directly from device.”

2:02: iOS camera improvements include new tools to edit, rotate and crop photos. And, a shortcut to use your camera while the iPhone is locked.

1:59: Safari includes a Reader function that lets you save web articles for offline reading–stripped of ads! MacRumors: “Reading list is synched somehow across multiple devices.”

1:53: Apple has built Twitter functionality into the new iOS: “You can sign into Twitter in the OS, it’ll work across apps.” You can also send tweets from other apps, like your photo library, maps, or cameras.

1:50: Introduced Newsstand, a mobile application for collecting magazine and newspaper subscriptions. MacLife: “You can also read it offline, and the cover will be the front page of the newspaper”

1:47: Apple App Store has counted 14 billion downloads and paid more than $2.5 billion to developers for these purchases.

1:40: Apple now showing off iOS update–mobile devices selling like hotcakes.  MacRumors: “sold over 200 million iOS devices”

1:35 Apple generates applause by introducing an email search, replacing clunky email search. Technogizer: “Mail now has search suggestions, like a search engine.”

1:30 Introduces AirDrop–a document sharing tool, a good way to share eBook copy or manuscript drafts in an office or home. MacRumors calls it a “Peer to peer wifi-based network.”

1:27 MacLife points out how this will help writers using Pages–the writing application won’t lose your work nor your place on the page: “relaunches Pages to show that it brings back to windows just the way they were, with his text selected just like how he left it.”

1:20 For all the clumsy clickers in the audience, the new OS will pick up where you left off when you close all applications–autosave for applications. MacRumors: “Resume, instantly resume where you were in an application after you quit it.”

1:14 Apple’s new Lion OS will feature swiping capabilities and full screen applications–change applications by swiping. Gizmodo: “There are no scroll bars. They don’t need ‘em any more!”

1:07 The event sold out in two hours–so we aren’t the only journalists following along at home.

1:00 pm: Here’s more from the press release last week: 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 on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – 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.

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