Here’s a first look at iOS 5 running on an iPhone 4. Just look how cool this is!

Images in this post are credited to Twitter user dchohfi.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a famous photographer say something like “it’s not your equipment, it’s how you use it”; but they love to trot out that phrase like a dog breeder trotting out a prize poodle. And of course, they’re right. In fact, one of the most important — if not the most important — feature is that the camera is actually around for you to take the shot with — or you’ll miss the moment.  The second? That the damn thing doesn’t require much fumbling around with to operate.

The iPhone has never had any problem with the first one. And today, bam — Apple has just taken care of the second. In fact, the camera tweaks in iOS 5 should make the iPhone the most-used camera ever. Here’re the much-needed improvements, in order of grooviness.

Apple’s Developer Center is finally back up after being offline all morning.

That means iCloud, iOS 5 and a new beta of Lion are available — to registered developers only.

If you’ve only got two minutes, watch the highlights of this morning’s WWDC keynote in this CNN video.

Otherwise check out our WWDC SuperGuide, which gives a fuller overview.

Definitely a major bag of goodies announced by Apple at WWDC today, but one item many expected further info on was not discussed: the ability to finally print from an iPad or iPhone using AirPrint and your existing printer shared by your Mac. A bit surprising that this important feature is still missing in action.

As a follow-up to last week’s super guide of everything we expected at WWDC 2011, here’s everything Steve Jobs and Apple actually did announce at this year’s WWDC, from Lion’s exciting new features to the revolution of iOS 5 and iCloud.

No wonder Steve Jobs is smiling.

He just struck a deal with the record labels to finally monetize pirated music —  a move that “resets the whole music industry,” according to one music-tech CEO.

Last Thursday we told our Twitter followers we would throw a weeklong giveaway party if we reached 50,000 Twitter followers by the end of the week. Well, our fans heard the call and exceeded our expectations by boosting us up to 53,000! To show our gratitude for our fans we’ll be giving away an awesome iMainGo X (along with some other stuff) every day this week, starting today. Entry into each daily contest will be varied depending on the day, so keep an eye out for the giveaway posts so that you can ensure you win. Here’s how to enter today’s giveaway:

As promised, Steve Jobs and Apple made sweeping software-related announcements at the WWDC keynote in San Francisco Monday.

While much of the functionality previewed by the Cupertino, CA technology behemoth will not be available to users until sometime this fall, several companies and technology purveyors have got to be quaking in their boots as a result of seeing Apple’s roadmap to the future.

Mac OS X Lion has more than 250 new features, and Apple has thoughtfully put together a list of all of them.

Here are some interesting nuggets plucked from that list…

Today, Apple announced a new service called iCloud which will be available this fall. Apple’s iCloud will be free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users.  Users that sign up for iCloud will be able to retain their me.com or mac.com email address and all of their MobileMe mail, calendars, contacts, and bookmarks will move to the new service.

Here’s the link to the 2011 WWDC keynote video on Apple’s website.

Looks like the small tweaks are starting to roll in. A couple of our Twitter followers sent us pictures of a new feature for the App Store on their iPhones that allows them to view their recent app purchase. The app lets you view not only what you’ve purchased, but also what apps aren’t installed on the current iOS device you’re using.

Apple added a new video to their website that introduces viewers to the exciting new features of iOS 5. With Scott Forstall and his team touting a lot of the new cloud capabilities, camera, iMessaging and other features, what are you most excited for about iOS 5? Click through for the video link.

OK folks, this page is for you. You’ve heard about iCloud and iMessage and iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud and Lion and iOS5 and OMG, there’s so much stuff.

There was a lot of good stuff unveiled by Apple this morning at WWDC.

But the best news?

Is your head still spinning from the smackdown of new details Steve Jobs and the Apple crew just slammed you with? Apple’s iCloud page just went live so you can get all the details on the new software that Apple is bringing to you for free later this fall. Of course, Cult of Mac will be posting all new material throughout the day breaking down iCloud and it’s features, so don’t stray too far.

Lion represents something of a landmark in the history of operating systems, for many reasons.

Hooray! One More Thing! And all is not lost: Apple’s giving us all Cloud Storage lockers! It’s called iTunes Match, and it’s the much ballyhooed scan-and-match functionality that Apple’s been working on.

“iTunes in the cloud,” Steve Jobs says. ” As you recall, it’s just for the music you purchased in the iTunes store. But you may have some that you ripped yourself. And there’s three ways you can deal with that.”

“One, you can sync your devices over Wi-Fi or cable, and then you can rely on iCloud. Or, if it’s just a few songs you love, you can buy them on iTunes. But we’re offering a third way, and we call it iTunes Match.”

iTunes will now scan your music collection and match it with the 18 million songs Apple has in the iTunes music store. It takes just minutes to do, and matches the stuff you’ve ripped and mirrors them in the cloud at 256kbps AAC with DRM free.

It’s affordable, too! It costs just $24.99 per year. For everything, no maximum storage. This is what Apple built its North Carolina data super center for.

Wow. That blew Amazon Cloud and Google Music out of the water. It pays to sign the contracts.

Now Steve Jobs is spelling out the details of how you get iCloud and what it’ll cost.

Buy a new iOS Device and you get 5GB of storage free, with apps and books not counting. That’s just for documents and mail.

iCloud will be turned on by default.

iCloud will debut in iOS 5 proper, with a Dev Preview released today, but iTunes in the Cloud will show up in iOS 4.3 today as a beta.

But wait! Steve Jobs has one more thing to announce… and it’s cloud storage! Hooray!

Steve Jobs is back on stage now, to unveil the last part of iCloud that makes it truly magical. We all know what to expect here, but Steve Jobs spells it out: “iTunes in the cloud.”

“You know, it’s the same old story. I buy something on my iPhone, and it’s not on my other devices. I grab my iPod and it ain’t there,” says Jobs.

They’re aiming to change that with iCloud. For songs you’ve already bought — like apps, or iBooks — there’s now a purchased button to allow you to easily re-
download to your device, no additional charge.

Buy a new track? It automatically pushes to all of your device. Steve says this is an industry first.

It all happens at 256K AAC, and supports up to 10 devices for free.

So this is what iCloud is. It isn’t streaming music at all. It just syncs any iTunes purchased track automatically across 10 iOS devices. Wow. That is outrageously disappointing. Does Steve have something up his sleeve still though?

First up? Documents syncing with iCloud.

If you create a Pages document, it uploads and store in the cloud, then pushes live to all the devices you can run Pages on. That feature is live in Pages, Numbers and Keynote… it’s iWork grown up.

It’s a bit disappointing, in that you still need a native app to access all your documents. There also doesn’t appear to be any true cloud editing.

It’s all part of Apple’s attempt to get rid of the file system. As such, Apple’s releasing iCloud storage APIs, so any app can use them. It even works on Macs and PCs!

It works the same for Photos. “I take photos on any device, puts them in the camera roll, and then it’s uploaded to the cloud and downloaded to all of my devices, just waiting for me when I get home. In addition, I can import photos,” says Steve.

There’s nothing new to learn. You just access your Photo Stream by punching a button in Camera or Photos.app. On the Mac, it’s built into iPhoto. On the PC, it’s built into the Pictures folder. It even works on the Apple TV! The only problem is they only last for thirty days, which I don’t quite get.

Seems like we know what the North Carolina data facility was built for, don’t you think?

iCloud doesn’t stop at the free core apps, though. It’s getting App Store integration.

You can now see your purchase history on all devices, and redownload an app easily by just tapping it. No longer is there any confusion about which app you own and which you don;t.

iBooks does the same thing, as does music and video. When you buy anything new, it pushes down to all of your devices automatically.

With iBooks, it’ll even store bookmarks and notes across devices. This is Apple’s answer to Kindle’s Whispersync.

Even better? iCloud automatically backs up most of the data on your device to the cloud once a day, including purchased content, camera roll, device settings and app data.

But Steve Jobs promises that as impressive as this all is, it’s the last three features that are amazing.

Here’s how iCloud will work, according to Jobs:

“Now, if I get something on my iPhone, it’s sent to the cloud immediately, and they’re pushed down to my devices automatically. And now everything is in sync without having to think about it. I don’t have to be near my Mac or PC.”

“Some people think the cloud is just a hard disk in the sky. You transfer back and forth. We think it’s way more than that. We call it iCloud. It stores your content in the cloud, and automatically pushes it to your devices.”

It’s completely integrated with apps, and there’s nothing new to learn. It all just works, no iTunes required.

But why should we believe Apple? “After all, they’re the ones that brought me MobileMe,” Steve Jobs jokes. He’s clearly still pissed about that.

“It wasn’t our finest hour, but we learned a lot. We’ve written Contacts, Calendar and Mail from the ground up to be iCloud apps.” All the changes are stored in the cloud and pushed to your devices.

Best of all, these three core apps are now free… with no ads.

Steve Jobs has come back onstage to talk about iCloud.

I get to talk about iCloud. We’ve been working on this for some time. About 10 years ago, we had one of our most important insights. We thought the PC would be the hub for your digital life. Where you put your photos, your video, your music,” says Jobs.

“You were going to acquire it, and sync it to the Mac, and everything would work fine. And it did… but it’s broken down in the last few years.”

“Why? Because all your devices have photos, have video, have music. If I buy something on my phone, I have to sync it to get a song I bought. Then I have to sync that to other devices, and if I have photos, it’s the same thing… and keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy!”

“We’ve got a solution for this problem. We’re going to demote the PC and the mac to just be a device. We’re going to move your hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.”

Wow. I had no idea they were going to phrase iCloud as an invalidation of the PC as a center of your computing life, but it makes sense, given where Apple’s business is going. Can’t wait to see the details.