by Mark Taoilinn
Yesterday Steve Jobs announced the July launch of Lion – the eighth generation of Mac OS X. At RunRev we’re always working hard to make sure that you can use the latest and best operating systems available. So we’re proud to announce that RunRev is Lion compatible already and that we’re working hard to integrate the new lion features into future LiveCode releases.
Steve Jobs, wearing his trademark jeans and black turtle neck, took the stage yesterday as James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’ played in the background. Expectations were high, not just in San Francisco’s Moscone Center West. Twitterers, facebookers and bloggers the world over were all eagerly waiting to hear if Apple were going to deliver. “Looking forward to Steve Jobs telling me what I’ve been missing all my life without realising it” said @blueskies on Twitter. I felt just the same! Well, Steve delivered, and by the time he was finished every one of us felt good too.
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Mac OS X – Lion
The big news yesterday was the July launch of Lion, the new version of the Mac OS X, with over 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs. That’s not all – Apple have set the upgrade price at only $29.99. Lion can only be downloaded via the App Store but any purchase can be used for 4 machines.
LiveCode versions 4.5 and above are already compatible to work with Lion so you can continue to work on your existing projects after you upgrade your OS. Of course some of the 250 new features and 3,000 new APIs have not been worked into LiveCode yet but we’re working hard to include the new features in future updates.
Lion is packed with innovative new features aimed at increasing user experience by providing a consistent look and feel across all Apple devices. As such we see desktop converging towards the iOS experience and Apple are moving towards seamless wireless integration across all Apple devices. Multi touch gestures: momentum scrolling, tap to zoom and swipe gestures for example; along with full screen capabilities deliver that iOS feel – you can now swipe between full screen apps on your desktop. Mission Control is the new OS command centre, integrating Snow Leopard’s Dashboard, Expose and Spaces, and a clever new 3 finger swipe gesture gives you instant access to Mission Control from anywhere within the OS. With Autosave you never need to worry about remembering to save your data again- all data is automatically saved and Versions will remember every change and each iteration of your file. Continue exactly where you left off with Resume – a system wide feature which puts you just where you logged off everytime you log back on. Easy peer to peer sharing is available with Airdrop and the new Mail application looks just like iPad mail and has a new Conversation function to group messages of the same conversation together.
Lastly the Mac App Store is baked right into Lion, further highlighting Apple’s desire to move away from physical software distribution (even the OS itself can only be purchased via the App Store).
iOS 5
Apple, we were told yesterday, is the King of the Mobile Market with 44% market share of the combined smart phone/mobile device market. 200 Million iOS devices have been sold to date and the 425,000 apps in the App Store have resulted in pay outs of more than $2.5 billion to developers.
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Apple are hoping to better this with iOS 5, out in the Autumn, and LiveCode will be compatible with iOS 5. iOS 5 is available in beta now for registered iOS developers and our dev team are excited to get their hands on it and to integrate the new features into future releases of LiveCode.
With iOS 5 Apple have taken a few lessons from Android and integrated many of the features that I love about my Android phone: Android-style Notification Center that swipes down from the top of the screen, Android-style Twitter Integration with camera and browser, and contacts are stored and restored via the cloud. Safari, Mail, Photos and Reminders have all been improved.
The best new feature about iOS 5 is its wireless integration with the cloud. You no longer need a PC to set up the device or to update it. iOS devices can now be completely standalone. If you do have a PC or multiple mobile devices, data (contacts, photos, music and apps) is now automatically synced between devices via the cloud. “Perhaps iOS 5’s paramount feature is that it’s built to seamlessly work with iCloud in the post-PC revolution that Apple is leading” said Steve Jobs.
iCloud
The last announcement at yesterday keynote was delivered by Steve Jobs himself. Apple have introduced the iCloud, a Free new product which syncs content – music, documents, photos, calendar etc – from one Apple device with the rest of a user’s Apple devices and is a much needed replacement to the less than popular MobileMe service. My favorite element of this is in iBooks – if you bookmark a page on a book on your iPad that bookmark will also exist on your iPhone (where a copy of the book was stored automatically through the cloud) so you can continue reading across different devices without any interruption. It’s clever thinking like this that keeps Apple at the top for user experience.
Developers will be pleased to hear that an API will make iCloud available on PCs, Macs and devices. We look forward to seeing how our customers integrate iCloud into their LiveCode apps.
iTunes has also been integrated into the cloud, so any music purchased on iTunes on one device will be back up at no extra charge to any other Apple device. iTunes Match will scan existing music collections, even those not purchased on iTunes, and download an iTunes version of that track onto a users entire set of devices, for $24.99. A clever way for Apple to monetize pirated music!
iCloud is available immediately.
LiveCode is excited about the advance announced by Apple at WWDC. We are proud to be Lion and iOS 5 compatible and look forward to integrating the exciting new features announced yesterday into future versions of LiveCode.
Image credits: Endgadget
