Apple announced today that the next version of their desktop operating system, Mac OS X Lion -- the one that takes iPhone and iPad features back to the Mac -- is now available for developers to preview.
“The iPad has inspired a new generation of innovative features in Lion,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Developers are going to love Mission Control and Launchpad, and can now start adding great new Lion features like full screen, gestures, Versions and Auto Save to their own apps.”
There are the features they've mentioned before, including the Mission Control system that replaces/unifies Spaces and Exposé, Launchpad which lets you have a grid of apps like iOS, full screen apps also like iOS, more multitouch gestures like iOS (sensing a trend?), and some new ones like a new, iPad-inspired version of Mail, AirDrop which sounds like AirPlay for files, Resume which is saved-state for Mac OS, Auto-Save, a new File Vault, and more.
No mention of 10.7, does that mean Apple thinks version numbers aren't even developer-facing information anymore? Press release after the break and feel free to speculate if we'll see things AirDrop show up for iOS at next week's iPad event...
[Apple.com]
