Apple (News - Alert) is widely regarded as a company that likes to not only bring out things that no one would ever expect, but does so under great secrecy. Thus, whenever reports emerge about Apple products of the future, the reports are widely spread throughout the blogosphere. Apple leaking information, though, is something that very seldom happens, and today was a surprisingly big day for them indeed.

First, Apple let a test version of the latest update to icloud (News - Alert).com emerge, which is set to offer several such apps to the web version of Apple's cloud site. Included as part of the leak were Notes and Reminders, two features that made perfect sense to be there, as they were also set to hit the release of OS X Mountain Lion, when it finally makes its appearance. The apps were also visible at beta.icloud.com, though signing in for them was, reportedly, impossible.

Further word emerged that Apple had some plans to throw over the bizarre but necessary tenuous alliance between themselves and Google (News - Alert), by removing Google Maps from iOS devices in favor of what was said to be an internally-developed mapping software. Based on the produce of a series of acquisitions Apple made over the last three years, the software was said to be similar to Google Maps, but also improving on it in areas like 3D mapping.

Finally, there was a report that emerged suggesting that Apple was retooling Mac OS X so that it would be able to run on high-resolution MacBook screens similar to those found on the new iPad. Icons were seen to be both updated to look different than their previous incarnations, and resolutions were also increased, with the TextEdit icon in particular going from a resolution of 512 x 512 to 1024 x 1024.

Apple is a fairly constant source of news in the industry, as they have a lot of involvement in a lot of different segments--the iPanel, for example, is said to be the name of Apple's attempt at a television, following a bit of a conflict with British television stations when Apple wanted to call it the iTV--and a very loyal user base that follows Apple movement closely. Apple always has a lot on its plate at any given time, so leaks like this are downright inevitable, and are always worth watching. Not all of them pan out, of course--the electronics industry is in such flux that anything that's right about the future may well have changed by the time it was supposed to come to pass--but they're always worth watching to consider the future of Apple's development path.