So much anticipation goes into an Apple keynote presentation, that it's practically impossible for any keynote to live up to expectation. Yesterday's WWDC keynote was no exception. I listened to a good chunk of the keynote live (thanks to ustream.tv), and sat down and watched the entire 2 hour presentation last night after I got home. All in all, this keynote was a little strange. Nearly half of the keynote was recycled material from the last presentation - information about the iPhone SDK, and demos of iPhone applications. Sure, some of the demos were pretty cool (Band, in particular), but I'm not sure who the intended audience was for that first hour. All of the hardcore Apple developer types knew all of that material, and as far as I can tell the press is on board as well. So, I guess if there were any mobile developers who have been living in a cave for the last three months, and happened to catch yesterday's keynote, that first hour was for you.
Stripping that away, there were really only two new things announced yesterday - the .Mac "upgrade", Mobile Me, and the new iPhone 3G. I haven't seen any technical details of Mobile Me yet, but it seems like from an engineering perspective, the two major areas of work were the over-the-air syncing and the AJAX web applications. While I'm sure that both presented major technical challenges, neither is really something sexy, in the "I gotta have this right now" way. Now that I have two Macs at work, I'm more interested than ever in keeping them in sync. I suppose that I will give Mobile Me a try (the 60 day free trial is a great idea), but the $99/year price just seems "wrong", in the face of so many Internet services that are provided more cheaply than that. I recognize that Apple is providing Mobile Me ad-free, and has to recoup their cost somehow, but I think that the cost of the basic service should just be baked into Mac OS X. Maybe every Mac user gets 1Gb of storage, and you pay if you want more?
As for the iPhone 3G, it looks pretty good. Again, not too many new features - only 3G and GPS, but I think that a ton of engineering went in under the hood, in order to perfect the wireless reception, and get the most out of the battery. The biggest news is the price. As I blogged previously, I had a feeling that Apple was going to be aggressive on the price, and I was right. I have seen some people making a big deal that the low price requires a 2 year contract - but the original iPhone's high price also required a 2 year contract. So, in that light, the iPhone 3G looks like a pretty good deal. That being said, I'm still quite satisfied with my current iPhone, so I think I'm going to hold out, and see what next year's iPhone model holds.
Some of things that I most wanted from the keynote were nonexistent - information about the next version of Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) and new Mac hardware. Snow Leopard was covered in a later session, which is encumbered by an NDA. Some information is leaking out, but I was hoping for a lot more meat. And as for Mac hardware updates, I know that people were hoping for new portables, but hello - the Mac mini hasn't been updated in like, forever. What is the deal with that?
All in all, this was merely a good keynote, not great. While I think Apple is positioned to have a banner decade (as the iPhone runs rampant over the mobile industry), I spend most of my time using a Mac, and thus I'm always more interested in news from that side of the house.
-Andy.