I am following this on the TechCrunch.

“We’re going to talk about 3 things today. If hardware is the brain, the sinew, the software is their soul”

“We’re going to talk about Lion, iOS 5, and some interesting cloud stuff”

“Next up in OS X: Lion. A big update with over 250 new features - we are going to go through 10 of them today.”

First - Multitouch Gestures

Multitouch is built into every version of OS X now.

For OS X Lion Gestures and full screen apps work hand in hand; work full screen, swipe to get back to your desktop, then swipe to bring the app back.

Photo Booth now comes complete with face tracking technology - shown on screen as birds over the presenters head follows him as he moves.

Still nothing about iOS 5 yet. I think we are going to have to wait a while for this. They have to build up the excitement.

Next they’re going to regale us with stores of the Mac App Store - “#1 PC channel for buying software now. Passing Best Buy and Walmart.” This to me means nothing because I have no problem going to software developers/company websites to download my software myself. But then again, I am a PC (Windows) guy.

OS X Lion is to become more like iOS with a feature such as “Launchpad” - - make a simple gesture: pinch motion — all your apps fly on screen. You can rearrange icons - create folders like in iOS.

Interesting the OS X is getting to be more like iOS. The next couple of updates they go through are all auto-saving. Cool but not really noteworthy.

Apple is now going to try and kill the USB stick. AirDrop will automatically look for other computers around you and allow you to share stuff between them. It is P2P WiFi-based. Nothing to set up. Confirmation on both ends. Data encrypted.

Last feature to be discussed about OS X Lion is the new Mail interface. It allows for better searching, it looks like the iPad’s iOS Mail, and has conversation threading.

FINALLY - we are on to iOS discussion!

Rehashing now all about iOS and what it has done in the past, nothing new yet.

iOS 5 is going to be a “major release”

“Notification Center” coming to iOS - sounds a lot like the Android Notification bar in HTC Sense. Notifications are no longer interrupting. Animation comes down from top during a game, for example.

Next up is Newsstand: Newsstand is a unified place in the app store where all subscription magazines are placed; download any of them, and they’re placed in the newsstand app. Also, each subscription app will do background downloads.

Single sign-on coming for Twitter. Seems in iOS Apple is going to use your Twitter credentials to log in to everything - what?

Twitter photos and @ usernames can be autopulled into contacts - great idea. Again, something that has been available on other phone software for a while now.

Reader coming to iOS - was already on Desktop OS X beforehand. “Once you make it a full page, Safari/Reader automatically pulls in all the pages of that story — even if the site separates it out and tries to make you click between.” Great idea. Definite Like.

Instapaper copycat is being thrown in there too under the name Reading List.

Apple finally has added Tabbed Browsing to Safari for iOS. The Tabs are always visible on the iPad’s screen and aren’t one button away snapshots as they were before. So it looks very much like a desktop/laptop interface.

Next up is Reminders: Sounds like a scheduling app. Let’s you store dates AND locations. It will let you set a reminder that says ‘Remind me to call my wife when I leave the Convention Center today’.”

Camera app improvements is next. It is going to be WAY FASTER. There will be a Lockscreen shortcut that when clicked will bring you right into the Camera without unlocking and let you take a few photos.

You can use the Volume Up button to take a picture now.

Pinch-to-zoom within the camera is now available.

Lock auto-exposure/auto-foc.us as you pan around with the camera.

Photo editing such as cropping, rotating, red eye reduction is now available right from within iOS - smart.

In the video camera you will be able to upload your vids from your camera roll straight to YouTube. This is nothing new on other platforms/devices unless I am misunderstanding this feature.

Next Mail but first - A built in dictionary, throughout the OS. All you have to do is highlight a word, and next to copy there’s a “Define” option. Great idea.

Drag and drop names from one field to another - such as from the To: line to the BCC: line.

New variant of the keyboard. Split the keyboard to type with thumbs - I am guessing this is more for iPad. What is smart is that it’s persistant for every app in system. Switch apps, it stays how you want it.

No more requirement to connect your phone to iTunes out of the box. The iPhone/iPad is going PC Free.

Software updates are now going to be OTA (over-the-air). This has been predicted before. Pretty much everything in the iOS OTA updates is as predicted in previous posts.

iMessage about to be detailed. This is the big one I think!

iMessage is going to be a new messaging service between all iOS users. Text, photos, videos, contacts — everything you’ve come to expect. Delivery receipts, Optional read receipts, typing indications. Will this kill BBM?

iMessages are based on an Apple ID (maybe your iTunes ID?) so that if you switch devices you can pick up where you left off. It works over 3G and Wi-Fi and everything will be encrypted.

Will this kill BBM? I don’t know. They’re basically going up against an already completely built community and trying to eat away at it. It will be rough. Also, if people are on BES their IT Depts/bosses can see EVERYTHING if they want to even BBM? Why would enterprise want to lose that?

Developer seed is coming TODAY! Ships to everyone in the Fall. iOS 5 will support iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 1 & 2, and 3rd Gen or later iPod Touch.

iCloud now being detailed. Everything will sync automatically to the cloud.

Everything is also completely FREE and without ads. MobileMe was $99 but all its features are now free.

Contacts, Calendar, Mail have now been completely rewritten from ground up to be iCloud apps.

The App Store is now going to be in the cloud too so that when you buy something on one device it will immediately be available on all devices.

Same thing goes with iBook. Even page bookmarking is sent to the cloud so you can pick up where you left off on another device.

iWorks too - all documents are just saved into the cloud. Sounds to me like GoogleDocs and the integration with MS Office that it already has. I am pretty sure Microsoft also has its own cloud integration available too although I cannot remember it.

A lot of us have been working for 10 years to get rid of the file system - so the user didn’t have to worry about it — Steve Jobs. Yes, Steve now really wants you to hand over complete control of everything on your devices to him. No thanks dude.