iCloud, iOS 5 headline a packed WWDC keynote from Apple

ICloud syncing. Multitouch Lion. A "Cut the Cord" feature for iOS 5.

Those were the major announcements from Apple's annual keynote from the World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco Monday. But Apple CEO Steve Jobs packed this press conference full of updates, revisions, and improves for iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers.

Although he is technically on a medical leave, Jobs has made regular appearances at Apple events this year. WWDC was no exception, to the delight of the more than 5,000 developers who gathered in the Moscone convention center to hear him outline Apple's new software products.

The announcements made at the keynote fell in to three large categories, centered around the new "Lion" release of the Mac operating system; the iOS 5 release for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches; and a new iCloud offering.

Leading off the show was Mac OS Lion, a release that has been available to developers for quite some time in beta form, and thus is fairly well known. The presenters highlighted new features of Lion, such as the ability to run applications using the entire screen, rather than in windows. Many of the new features take advantage of Lion's multitouch support, a feature now widely used on the iPhone and iPad.

Mission Control is another new feature, allowing Mac users to quickly find and switch between their running applications. Also new is Launchpad, which looks almost exactly like the iOS main screen, with applications displaying as icons, and groupable into folders.

A useful feature of Lion is the ability to resume applications in the same state as you left them, down to which files are open and what text is highlighted. Working hand in hand with the new resume feature is autosave, which aims to free users from having to remember to save their documents or risk losing work. The "versions" feature lets a user access previous revisions of a document, and even move material from a previous revision to a new one.

Finally, Air Drop lets two Mac users transfer files easily between their computers using Wi-Fi.

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