Apple Officially Shows iOS 5

At today’s WWDC keynote, iOS 5 was officially shown off for the gathered crowds. As is often the case with keynote, first Apple started with some numbers. Scott Forstall, SVP of iOS got up and talked about the fact that there are 200 million iOS devices out there. In the first 14 months, they’ve sold 25 million iPads (and they’re still hard to get). 15 billion songs sold through iTunes, 130 million books through iBookstore. 425,000 apps, 90,000 for the iPad, and 14 billion downloads. That’s given $2.5 billion to developers.

iOS 5 will introduce some 1500 new APIs for developers to play with, and 200 new features for users. Here are the big 10:

• Notification: As everyone presumed, a major change to the notification system is in the works. Apple has sent out more than 100 billion push notifications, and have made a better way of dealing with them. There will now be a list of notifications, as part of a “notification center”. As rumored, you swipe down from the homescreen to see it (like Android). You can see weather, stocks, notifications, missed calls, etc. From the lock screen, you can swipe to listen to a voice message, or go to a text conversation. Alerts will be small and unobtrusive.

• NewStand: subscription content from major publishers, all in one place. We heard rumors about this months ago but it died down. A single place for all your subscriptions. Background downloading.

• Twitter: Sign on from your device, and any app your download will just ask for permission to access your logon. No need to reenter credentials. Built in to camera.app and photos.app with location details, too. Can tweet from most apps, and @ usernames can be pulled from contacts.

• Safari: Apparently powers many browsers on Android, as is open source, and accounts for 64% of all mobile web browsing. Now has Reader for easy reading of articles, and better sharing tools. Also: Reading List. Like Instapaper, syncs across Safari for PC, Mac and iOS, save articles to read later. Tabbed browsing!

• Reminders: To do list with reminders built-in. You can store dates and locations within it. Set it to remind you when you arrive at or leave a certain location (a lifesaver if you tend to fall asleep on public transportation). Will sync via iCal.

• Camera: Much faster, and you can open it from the lockscreen! You don’t need to unlock then launch it! It’s just next to the slide-to-unlock slider, and you can use the volume up button to take a photo. You can even take a photo if your camera is password locked. Pinch to zoom from within the app, tap to focus and exposure lock. Finally added some basic editing tools, like crop, red eye reduction, rotate, one click enhancement.
• Mail: rich text formatting, indentation control, draggable addresses, flag as unread, and better searching. S/MIME support for enterprise. Dictionary, will work in any app. Just select like you would to copy/paste, and there’s now a “define” button. A split keyboard on the iPad, so you can type with your thumbs.

• Wireless Syncing: Post PC. No need to connect to iTunes. Can now set up the device without plugging into a computer. Software updates now pushed out over-the-air. In order to save your megabytes, the updates are now no longer the entire OS again, but just the changes. Just the Delta.
• Game Center: 50 million users on iOS, 100,000 game titles. Now you can add photos, and it will have friend recommendations, friends of friends, and game recommendations. The other big change? Turn based games over Game Center. Hello, Risk!

• iMessage: Apple made IM client for the iPhone. As semi-predicted earlier today, it works on all iOS devices with iOS 5. You can send Text, Photo, Video, Contacts, and Group Messages. Goodbye text messages. Delivery receipts so you know if they got it. Encrypted messages. Works over 3G and WiFi. Typing notifications so you know if they’re responding. And it pushes to all your devices.

Those are the 10 big ones, but not the only ones discussed. Also mentioned was AirPlay Mirroring, which lets you mirror your iPad 2 to your TV, and WiFi sync to iTunes. Daily autobackups. New gestures. New developer tools. Emoji. Typing shortcuts. Alternate map routes.

iOS 5 will head out this Fall, with developer seeds going out today. It’ll work on the iPhone 3GS (yay!), iPhone 4, both iPads, and iPod Touch 3rd gen and better.