Hasta La Gadget!

11:58 a.m. We’re wrapping up. Thanks for tuning in!

11:57 a.m. Steve says this is Apple’s third data center. It’s in North Carolina. “It’s full of stuff. Full of expensive stuff. We are ready for our customers to start using iCloud, and we can’t wait to get it in their hands.”

11:55 a.m. iTunes Match: You scan and match, annual price is $25. So that’s iTunes Match and it goes along with iTunes in the cloud.

11:53 a.m. “Now there’s one more thing,” Jobs says. It pertains to iTunes in the cloud. There are songs you ripped yourself. There’s iTunes Match. Matches up your library with iTunes store. They’re scanning and matching your library so they don’t need to upload that large part of the memory. Matched songs upgraded to 256kb AAC DRM-free. iTunes Match costs $25 per year.

11:52 a.m. Developers can get hands on iCloud beta today. iTunes in the cloud portion will run for users on iOS 4.3 beta, so everyone can get their hands on it and get it on their devices. iCloud ships with iOS 5 this fall.

11:50 a.m. iCloud stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices, and it’s integrated with your apps, so everything happens automatically. So how do you get it? You upgrade your iOS device with iOS 5, type in your Apple ID and password, and there’s a switch to turn on iCloud. Everybody gets 5 gigabytes of free storage for Mail, Documents and Backup. They’re not counting music, apps or books toward that 5 gigs, nor are they counting Photo Stream.

11:49 a.m. iTunes in the cloud – you can share music with up to 10 devices. Steve is wrapping up iCloud. All the iCloud-integrated apps are free.

11:48 a.m. Apple shows the iTunes Store on an iPhone. You buy and the song downloads to the iPhone and it’s already on your iPad, too. Now when you buy a song on one device it automatically downloads to all devices without doing any work, and that’s iTunes in the cloud.

11:47 a.m. It’s worth noting that only songs you *purchase* are going to be syncable to the cloud. Doesn’t appear that songs you rip from CDs or pirate are going to be able to sync.

11:46 a.m. “This is the first time we’ve seen this in the music industry. No charge for [dowloading to] multiple devices,” Steve says. They’re demoing it now.

11:45 a.m. Last but not least is iTunes Music. Here’s the big one. For songs you already bought, there’s a Purchase history button and you can see the songs you bought and download to any of your devices at no additional charge.

11:44 a.m. Steve’s back on stage. “Isn’t that awesome?” Summary: Photos you take or import upload to iCloud, iCloud stores each photo for 30 days, devices store last 1,000 photos, and Macs and PCs store all photos.

11:42 a.m. Eddy Cue, VP of internet services, is demonstrating Photos in the cloud. He takes a photo on the iPhone, then picks up an iPad, and the picture is right there in the Photo Stream. Then you can save permanently by moving it to an album. On the Mac, the Photo Stream shows the photo you just took, too.

11:40 a.m. On a Windows PC the Photos app will sync with a Pictures folder. And Photos will sync with Apple TV, too, so you can see the photos right on your Apple TV. One problem we face is that photos are large and consume a lot of memory, so Apple is going to store the last 1,000 photos on devices to free up space. Any photos you want to keep permanently can get moved to an album and they stay forever. On the server photos will be stored for 30 days.

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HTC's Incredible 2 smartphone, which runs version 3.0 of the company's Sense software. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

HTC Sense customers may soon be able to download apps optimized just for their handsets.

HTC announced Thursday it will soon launch the HTC OpenSense software development kit, which aids developers in creating apps designed specifically to interact with HTC’s Sense software.

HTC Sense is the company’s custom graphical user interface, built atop the Android platform. Because HTC is competing with other manufacturers like Samsung and Sony Ericsson — all three of which ship phones using the Android platform — Sense’s custom interface serves to differentiate HTC phones from other devices.

Instead of having the stock Android interface, for example, the company’s hardware comes with HTC’s version of many common apps. On an HTC phone, Twitter is relabeled as “Peep.” Menu screens also come preloaded with things like an HTC-branded media player, and calendar and contacts apps.

“As the devices become more and more alike, manufacturers will do anything they can to differentiate themselves,” Gartner research analyst Ken Dulaney told Wired.com.

The OpenSense SDK looks promising. HTC reps say developers can create apps which utilize the stylus pen for HTC’s new Flyer tablet device, as well as the stereoscopic 3-D display. If HTC lures more developers into creating apps that interact with Sense, that means more content available specifically for HTC devices — which, in turn, gives potential customers more reasons to purchase HTC-made products.

Software developers are the lifeblood of mobile platforms. Without them, places like Apple’s App Store or the Android Market would be devoid of content. Thus it makes sense, so to speak, for smartphone manufacturers to court developers, drawing them to a specific platform.

HTC’s approach of inviting programmers to code apps for its smartphones is a stark contrast to Motorola’s relationship with developers. On the same day that HTC made its dev-friendly announcement, rival manufacturer Motorola had a few less-encouraging comments regarding the apps coming from the Android developer community.

At a technology conference Thursday, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha deflected questions on the battery life of his company’s products, placing the blame on the apps rather than the hardware.

“For power consumption and CPU use, those apps are not tested,” said Jha, referring to Android’s “open” policy of not vetting applications submitted to its Market. Google removes apps that violate its developer distribution agreement, but no system of evaluating an app’s power efficiency exists on the Market’s side. Jha went on to say that 70 percent of Motorola’s device returns are because of applications affecting performance.

Whether or not Jha’s comments are accurate, it’s a dangerous move for a company head to pass the buck to quality issues related to apps on the Android Market. Apps, of course, provided by the developer community.

A Motorola spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jha took the opportunity to make a plug for Motorola’s own custom graphical user interface, Motoblur. Jha said Motoblur development is advancing to the point where it can warn users how much battery a given app will use. Depending on how much power there is left on the phone, you’ll then be able to decide whether or not you want to run the app.

Two companies, with two very different approaches to drawing attention to the graphical interface, and two very different effects on developers.

On a tech blog, commenter Daniel McDermott’s opinion summed up the response to Jha: “It’s insane to think Moto would pass on the blame of their crappy skin on to other 3rd party devs when they can’t even get their own phones right.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 shares his vision for the company: Windows will run everywhere.  Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Microsoft has shown an early look at Windows 8. The upcoming OS is designed to run on any machine, from a tablet to a desktop PC, and that’s going to be a problem. While Windows 8 has some genuinely clever features, it is at heart yet another skinned version of regular old Windows.

Below is a video of it in action. Skip to a minute in, if you don’t care to hear about how tired the poor Windows 8 team is after so much work.

On the surface, Windows 8 looks pretty. The tile-based touch interface makes the iPad look old and dusty. The live info that can be seen at a glance, and the fast switching between apps are very slick. So is the split view, which lets you drag a second app in from the side and — after a pause — the existing app shifts over and makes space. Thus you can run two apps concurrently, which is enough to get most multitasking tasks done.

I’m also impressed by the thumb keyboard, an option which splits the QWERTY keyboard into two parts and shrinks them into the corners of the screen. I wish for this every time I use my iPad while standing up.

But under the hood, this is, like every other tablet-friendly version of Windows, a skin over a desktop OS. The fancy new “Windows 8 apps” are written in HTML5 and JavaScript, but you can also run regular ol’ Windows apps like Excel and Word. You even have access to Explorer and the full file system.

The issue? Microsoft is clinging on to its old PC legacy, which won’t help Windows 8 succeed as a tablet — for the same reasons we said Windows 7 wouldn’t be good for slates.  It will carry with it the baggage of the Windows PC legacy: vulnerability viruses, the need to install drivers, and apps that aren’t optimized for tablets. These were all issues that the iPad eliminated to make it better than traditional computers in a few key areas.

Given that developers can just run their existing apps in normal Windows mode, where will the incentive be to make amazing touch-only versions of applications, like the truly excellent Omni Outliner or GarageBand for the iPad? What we’ll get are a thousand Twitter widgets, turning the innovative tile skin into something akin to OS X’s Dashboard.

This also brings the disk-gobbling size of a desktop OS, along with the complications of running Windows (malware and the general weirdness of any desktop OS) and of course, the battery life of a desktop OS.

That’s fine. Many people want a full-featured computer in tablet form.

But remember that the iPad is selling in the millions precisely because it is simple, lacks a complicated file system and the like, and doesn’t require a nerd to keep it humming along.

People who want all that already have a choice. It’s called a laptop.

Microsoft is almost there, but it needs to lose its obsession with putting Windows on everything. Take this cool, tile-based OS and put it on a tablet, sure. But leave the mouse-based, legacy desktop OS out of it. And for God’s sake, don’t call it Windows.

Previewing Windows 8 [Microsoft]

See Also:

• WindPad: $500 Windows 7 Tablet Arrives September
• Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet Concept
• 7 Reasons You Won’t Want a Windows 7 Slate
• It’s Not Easy to Make a Tablet, Stantum Slate PC Proves

A cloud. Photo: Karen Ka Ying Wong/Flickr

Apple has confirmed maybe the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley: It’s been working on a cloud service, and will announce it at the June 6 Worldwide Developers Conference.

So now we know annual developer’s conference will unveil “iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering,” but we don’t know yet what it is, or what exactly will reside at the domain name it may have bought for $4.5 million in April.

iCloud could be the mythical iTunes streaming service, a possibility that is looking increasingly likely now that Apple has most of the major record labels signed up for it, in a space pioneered by Amazon and Google, which has no such deals. Or it could be Apple’s version of DropBox, the amazing sync and storage service that currently glues together the whole iOS ecosystem along with its desktop service.

Or it could be yet another abortion of an internet service, like Mobile Me, iDisk and Ping before it.

Whatever it is, it’ll have to be good. DropBox is already the default file system for iOS, and can be used by any developer, on almost any other OS. If iCloud is to succeed, it needs to be just as available to developers. ITunes streaming, too, needs to be something special. A “cloud locker” service like Amazon and Google’s is almost pointless, and we already have amazing streaming services like Spotify and Rdio.

Still, this won’t stop endless speculation during the next week, as pundits work up theories like a shaving brush works up a lather from a tiny, almost nonexistent nubbin of soap. And then on Monday — boom — we’ll know for sure.

Apple also said the keynote will be delivered by Steve Jobs, who is currently on medical leave, and that the WWDC will also focus on the new version of OS X 10.7 Lion, and the upcoming iOS 5.

Apple to Unveil Next Generation Software at Keynote Address on Monday, June 6 [Apple PR]

See Also:

• Apple’s Purchase of Lala Could Signal Cheaper, Streaming iTunes
• Why Apple Might Be Your Best Bet for This ‘Cloud Music’ Thing
• Apple Rumor Watch Part Infinity: Cloud-Based iTunes on June 7

Daedalus Touch may be the first truly iPad-ready text editor

Despite the ridiculous amount of iPad text editors in the App Store, none have yet managed to feel like truly iPad-exploiting apps. They may be controlled by touch, but they could exist equally well on a desktop machine, controlled by keyboard and mouse.

Daedalus changes all that. It is a gesture-driven app that could only work on the iPad. It also adds some interesting metaphors for documents and — despite some v1.0 glitches — it looks very promising.

The main navigation device is pinching. Your documents are organized in stacks consisting of infinite sheets of paper. To expand a stack and see these sheets, you pinch (or double-tap). To edit a sheet you pinch again.

The other gesture is the swipe. Swipe to move between stacks and pages. When you are at the last page in a stack, you swipe to create anew one and keep typing. You can drag the pages in a stack into any order, which makes Daedalus useful for sketching out stories and screenplays.

Here’s the view of a ‘Paper Stack’, a pile of document pages

The other big features is called “modeless search.” Theres a search bar at the top of the screen at all times. Enter a terms and the instances of that text string are highlighted in yellow. This search stays active as you pinch out to a stacks overview or pinch into a document. This lets you quickly get to any search term, wherever it might be.

There are other niceties, too. Daedalus supports TextExpander for quicker typing. It also lets you tap in the left and right margins to move the cursor left and right, and you cans switch between day and night modes to change the color of text and paper. There is also a persistent character and word count, and one really neat feature: a built in web browser. This gives quick access to Google, Wikipedia or Dict.cc, a multilingual dictionary site which also offers translations.

And of course it will sync with DropBox (as well as mobile me), and will let you export pages as text, stacks as zip files and even let you open the current document in any other plain-text capable app on your iPad.

There are some glitches. The zooming animations can be jerky, and the app likes to crash when you perform some bulk deleting operations. Given that v1.1 showed up just moments after I’d bought v1.0, and that the developer has already submitted a fixed v1.2, it looks like this part is under control.

Daedalus is available now, for $4.

Daedalus Touch product page [Soulmen]

See Also:

• PlainText: iPad Text-Editor from the Makers of WriteRoom
• Elements for iPad, a Dropbox-Syncing Text Editor
• Essay: iPad Rich Text Editor Shows Promise, Needs Work
• Essay for iPad Adds Clever Keyboard Shortcuts
• 15 iPad Apps You Should Download Today
• Dropbox Updated for iPad, External Editing Added