"Well, the big announcements at WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) happened this morning," begins Art Gorski. Here's his take on the latest and greatest. First, here's a summary from Macworld.
"Mac OS X Lion will be out next month for $30 but is available only through the App Store. If you haven't updated to the latest version of Snow Leopard I have no idea how you can get it. There are many changes designed to make Mac OS X look and act much more like iOS: Full screen apps (we've already seen this with the new iPhoto), the Launchpad feature, and support for multi-touch gestures everywhere (if you have an Apple touchpad).
"iOS 5 will be out in the Fall with 200 new features. The most interesting thing is that Apple has decided that syncing data amongst all your devices is a royal pain, so all syncing, including iOS updates, apps, and all data will sync wirelessly over 3G or wireless. Most of this syncing happens automatically without you even noticing. For example, if you take a picture with your iPhone camera, the next time you fire up your iPad or Mac that photo will be on that device. Along with iCloud (below), it will be possible to own an iOS device standalone for the first time, without ever attaching it to a computer at all!
"Remember Apple's Digital Hub idea? Where your Mac was your digital hub for all of your data and media? That's now over. Apple has demoted the Mac to just another device, like the iOS devices. Your digital hub is now in the iCloud. Also available in the Fall, iCloud is a FREE service that replaces MobileMe (well, kinda, see below). It will provide a me.com email account and sync that, along with contacts and calendars. Documents in the Cloud is a new app to facilitate automatically syncing iWork documents (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) amongst all your devices. iTunes in the Cloud lets you download any iTunes-purchased media to up to 10 different devices. A total of 5GB of space, shared between documents and email is available in addition to however much space is needed to sync your last 1000 photos and your iTunes-purchased media. An optional service called iTunes Match will be available for $25/year that will scan your complete iTunes library, including stuff you ripped yourself, try to figure out what it is, and then make very high quality versions available for download to your devices.
Art concludes, "Interestingly enough, Apple did not mention iCloud replacements for iDisk and web hosting. It's possible these are going away. However, Apple just extended all MobileMe subscriptions to June 6, 2012 to give you a year to figure out what to do."
Also, take a look at the Apple site here and the Apple HotNews site here for more descriptions of the latest and greatest!