The Best Overlooked Numbers And Subtle Features From WWDC 2011

@mgsiegler / 1:37 am PDT • June 7, 2011

In case you weren’t following our WWDC keynote coverage live earlier today, you missed — well, a lot. The event — which ran about two hours — was packed with information. Thousands of articles have already been written covering some of the bigger numbers and features. So I thought I’d highlight some of the smaller (or quickly mentioned) things you may have missed from the keynote.

Warning: if you’re all Apple’d out, you will absolutely hate this post. (So just skip to the comment section and talk gibberish about why Android is so great.) The rest, read on:

There are now 54 million active Mac users.
73 percent of those Mac users are now using notebooks instead of desktops
Photo Booth in OS X Lion has face tracking for targeted facial enhancements (like big eyes, or birds over your head)
The Mac App Store is already now the number one channel for buying software (beating Best Buy)
Starting with OS X Lion, Mac App Store apps can gain Push Notifications and In-App purchases
Updates will also now be delta updates — meaning you’ll only have to download what’s new, not the entire app
OS X Lion will only be available in the Mac App Store. Want a disc? Too bad, they’re extinct.
OS X Lion will weigh in at a svelte 4 gigabytes (not much bigger than an HD movie)
25 million iPads have been sold in just 14 months
15 billion songs have been sold through iTunes now
Apple has 18 million songs in their total iTunes Store library
130 million iBooks have been downloaded in a little over a year
There are now over 425,000 apps in the App Store — 90,000 of them are built for the iPad
14 billion apps have been downloaded in less than 3 years. (Yes, that will very soon surpass total song downloads.)
Apple has paid out $2.5 billion to third-party app developers — that’s up $1.5 billion from a year ago.
There are 225 million iTunes accounts (with credit cards attached and ready to spend)
100 billion Push Notifications have been sent
With Newsstand, magazine and newspaper apps can now download new content in the background when your device is inactive
With the Twitter integration deal, it’s now a bit more clear why Scott Forstall has an account. He appeared to use it on stage during a demo, but he didn’t actually. Still 0 tweets and still only following Conan.
The Twitter integration can update your contacts’ photos with their avatars in your Address Book.
2/3rds of all mobile web browsing is done through mobile Safari
Apple brought the Reader feature from Safari in OS X to the iOS version
iOS 5 Safari for iPad has tabbed browsing
The new Reminders app allows you to set a geo fence to send a notification when you enter or leave a place
The iPhone 4 is about to become the most camera overall on Flickr (we pointed this out weeks ago)
Double-clicking the Home button on the lock screen now brings up a camera icon to jump right to that app
That feature even bypasses an iPhone lock code, but you’ll only be able to take and view new pictures that way
The volume-up button has been reworked to act as a shutter button when in camera mode
There is now a way to enhance photos on the phone with one tap
You can now flag messages in the new email app (does that mean Gmail starring too?)
When reading email on the iPad in portrait mode, you can now swipe from the left to bring up your list of messages (instead of the pop-over)
The iBooks built-in dictionary now works system-wide
The iPad keyboard can now “rip” into two so you can more easily type with your thumbs
Software updates will now come over the air, and they too will be delta updates (much smaller)
The iPhone iPod app has been broken into Music and Videos apps (just like the iPod touch)
The iPad Music app has been entirely redone
After just 9 months, there are 50 million Game Center users (Xbox Live has gotten 30 million in 8 years)
Turn-based games (like Scrabble) are now fully supported in Game Center (previously developers had to do a lot of work to make these function)
iMessages has an option for “read receipts” — you can see that a person has read your message and at what time (sort of creepy)
iMessages work over WiFi and 3G (the carriers may be pissed off about that)
iMessages was built on the Push Notification infrastructure.
iOS Weather can now get hourly updates
Stock updates now come in real time (and both of these are widgets in the Notification pull-down)
The LED flash on the iPhone 4 can be set to visually show you when you have a message or call
You can now wirelessly mirror the iPad 2 to your TV (previously you needed an HDMI adapter for this)
WiFi sync is finally here for iTunes (this will backup your device as well)
There is a new gesture in iOS 5 to flick between open apps
Developers are also being granted access to the LED flash on the iPhone 4
Developers are also now able to change the backlight setting (like iBooks — apps like Instapaper previously made their own solutions)
With iCloud, there will be shared, collaborative calendars
Email will feature “no ads” (a shot at you-know-who)
You can wirelessly back up your devices to iCloud. This happens once a day automatically when you’re connected to WiFi
Documents in the Cloud even remembers what slide you were last looking at when you open it elsewhere
iCloud will have storage APIs that developers can use
This will work for Mac and PC apps too for seamless integration
Photo Stream is built into existing apps (Photos in iOS, iPhoto in OS X)
Photo Stream is also coming to Apple TV
Up to 10 devices can be used with iTunes in the Cloud
Apple provides 5 gigabytes of storage in iCloud for free. This can be used for backups, documents, and email. Purchased music and Photo Stream do not count towards this limit.
You will be able to purchase more storage if you need it. (Details aren’t yet set.)
If iTunes Match can’t find your music on the iTunes server, they will upload it for you
All songs found using iTunes Match will be automatically upgraded to 256 kbps quality AAC

The Best Overlooked Numbers And Subtle Features From WWDC 2011

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