In just three days, Steve Jobs will take the stage at San Francisco Moscone Center and kick off this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC. In so doing, he’ll announce new software, new products and end months of speculation about the new iPhone, iOS 5, iCloud music streaming and OS X Lion.
Here’s Cult of Mac’s complete overview of what we’re expecting to hear about at this year’s WWDC.
If you weren’t already excited about Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference – which kicks off on Monday – these images of the Apple logo going up on Moscone West in San Francisco are guaranteed to get you in the mood.
This is new the login screen in Lion Developer Preview 3, which was just released this afternoon. And we also have a list of some of the biggest changes.
Here’s a quick video tour of the new Mail client in OS X Lion. It’s got a three-pane view, nicely threaded “Conversations,” and a goes full screen. It’s very good. Mail alone is a good reason to upgrade to Lion.
Here’s a quick overview of Mission Control and Launchpad in OS X Lion, Apple’s upcoming major update to OS X.
Mission Control is like Expose, Spaces and Dashboard on steroids: Hit a hot corner and all the open windows fly away. You then get an overview of all the running applications, with thumbnails of open windows. There’s also your Dashboard widgets and virtual desktops in Spaces. When it was first previewed by Apple last year, critics said Mission Control was a mess, but I think it’s pretty good. It works really well. It’s much clearer than Expose, and I can see it becoming a central part of my workflow.
Launchpad, on the other hand, won’t be. Launchpad is like the Home screen on the iPad. Icons for all your apps are displayed in a grid. But it suffers from the same problem as the iPad — it’s hard to find the app you’re looking for among the clutter. Much easier to launch a search. Same in Lion.
As you’ve probably heard, touchpad scrolling is backwards in OS X Lion. Instead of pulling your fingers down to scroll down a window, you know push your fingers up.
Confused? You will be. It undoes years of muscle memory. So why would Apple do this?
It’s easy: because of iOS. It’s the same gesture you make on the screen of an iOS device when you scroll up and down the screen. You want to scroll down? You pull the content up.
It’s another example of the influence of iOS on OS X.
Apple’s Developer Forums going crazy about the new way to install OS X Lion through the Mac App Store. There’s complaints about failed downloads, invalid redemption codes and overall installation issues. But once developers get it installed, they say the new OS is awesome and totally opens up the Mac to new possibilities.