Apple's Compelling New Features Means Continued Consumer Appeal

As I sat through the WWDC Keynote where Apple announced and demonstrated a plethora of new features to OS X and iOS, the word that kept coming to me was "useful." Much of what they demonstrated appealed to me as a Mac user as useful and practical. They addressed many of the things they needed to in order to keep their software current and competitive as well as launched a new service in the process. Things like notifications and wireless sync as well as the addition of iCloud are all necessary for them to stay relevant and continue to appeal to current and new customers.

I found it refreshing that they publicly recognized how the landscape was changing and added valuable perspective to support many of the features they have developed. They recognized that what they did with Mobile Me was not the most elegant solution and completely re-vamped it, making it more compelling and useful for the end consumer.

They recognized that the PC used to be the hub of your digital life but now in the "post PC-era" the cloud is now the hub of your digital life. iCloud represents for Apple a serious commitment to cloud services as an integrated part of the entire Apple ecosystem. This is a key point and observation because I believe the battle of the future will be in web services.

The result of this recognition by Apple will be continued interest on behalf of consumers for their hardware, software and now services. We may argue the level of the innovations and some may even say they didn't innovate at all. Regardless they added a significant amount of useful and practical features that will result in continued consumer interest during future buying decisions.

Again my point is not that these features are exclusive to Apple or that other software platforms can't add these features to their platform. My point is simply that Apple, in my opinion, will continue to garner consumer attention with future buying decisions for PC's, Tablets and Smart Phones.

In my opinion these are the three most compelling and useful features of each key announcement:

Lion:

1. Integrated Multi-touch trackpad gestures

2. Mission Control – Spaces just doesn't always cut it and the gesture addition is slick

3. Full screen mode for applications – Focusing on the tasks at hand and eliminating distractions

iOS 5

1. Notification Center -

2. Safari enhancements – Reader, reading list and tabbed browsing in particular

3. Reminder's – Specifically reminders or To-do's triggered by location

4. New Keyboard for iPad – Cool enough I had to add a fourth

iCloud

1. Free

2. Calendar Sharing – This is extremely useful for families, especially non techie ones

3. Wireless data sync or photos, documents and apps.

What were your favorite new features?