The floodgates are open: Apple launch a barrage of updates and new apps

Appsplosion!!

I hope your broadband data cap is in good standing, because it won’t be by the end of the day! As well as the long-awaited iOS 5, Apple have released a barrage of updates for both Mac and iOS apps as well as launched some brand new ones. Keep reading for a summary of what’s new.

Lion 10.7.2.

Roar!

iCloud services are now embedded into OS X Lion allowing you access to your mail, contacts, calendars, notes, bookmarks and the new Find My Mac service which will hopefully do for your stolen MacBook Pro what Find My iPhone has done for many unlucky iDevice owners. Lion 10.7.2 is available via Software Update on your Mac and weighs in at somewhere around 700MB.

– OS X Lion

iPhoto 9.2

iPhoto: hug a cyclist in celebration today!

iPhoto 9.2. adds iCloud support, meaning you can now automatically view photos from your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad 2 without importing via USB if they have photostream enabled. The update is available via either Software Update if you bought it the “traditional” way, or via the Mac App Store if you bought it there or if it was included with your new machine. UPDATE: Aperture, too!

– iPhoto

AirPort Utility for iOS

John has a lot of AirPorts

If you have an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, Time Capsule or Airport Express, you can now configure it right from your iOS device rather than having to head to your Mac or PC. Download via this link:

– Airport Utility

Cards

Cards: No longer a pain in the *** to send

You can now send actual, physical greeting cards from your iPhone via snail mail to your loved ones thanks to Apple’s new Cards app. Add your own photos, text, and send anywhere in the world for NZ$6.49 per card including postage – good value I reckon!

– Cards

Find My Friends

Here's Sean! And Meg! Here they are!

Got friends? Friends with iOS devices? Then you’ll want this. Share your location with your friends, and see theirs.

– Find My Friends

iWork for iOS

Write about giraffes and save to the cloud

The iWork apps – namely Pages, Numbers and Keynote have been updated to support iCloud. You can now create documents on your iOS device and have them upload to your iCloud account for immediate retrieval on other devices and at iCloud.com.

As well as all this there are updates to iMovie and the Remote app, adding new features and iOS 5 compatibility to both. So, get your modem nice and comfy because the poor thing is going to be knackered by the end of the day. Hopefully you’ll still have some bandwidth left for the rest of the month to actually use these new services but we hope you have a ton of fun with all the new goodness. Don’t forget to hit the comments with any exciting new finds or to tell us what you’re downloading first.

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