WWDC - "Meh"

So like the Apple Fanboy I am, I was diligently refreshing the live blog feed from MacRumors and watching the 2 hour keynote via QuickTime last night.

The Good:
Snow Leopard. The biggest news is that existing users can upgrade for only $29. That's incredible. Take that Microsuck! From an everyday user's perspective, there's not a lot of wizbang new features. This release is all about speed and stability. In addition to freeing up 6GB of space on your hard drive, Snow Leopard should be significantly faster on your existing Mac with it's rebuilt Finder, QuickTime, and more.

iPhone 3.0. As an iPhone Developer (Shines Brighter Software), I've been running the 3.0 software for a while. It's noticeably faster and has a lot of great new features. The two best by far are the Spotlight search and landscape mail (and other apps). Spotlight is awesome because you no longer need to hunt and peck for stuff on your phone. If you need to find anything - ANYTHING, swipe to the left of the main home screen and start typing. Spot light begins to find stuff right away - applications, emails, text messages - anything on your phone. Sweet. Landscape is long overdue and just makes reading emails and others better. The copy & paste feature is well done (shake to undo), but in all my years of using mobile devices, I can think of 2, maybe 3 times I needed to use copy/paste. I personally never saw what all the fuss was about. But since I've said it, I'll probably have 32 copy/paste needs in the next 10 minutes.

iPhone 3Gs. Faster phone, digital compass, 3.2 megapixel auto focus camera with video, voice control. While Apple is pushing the video thing most, to me the feature with the most potential is voice control. Call anyone, dial by voice, control the iPod by voice, etc. Sweet. The autofocus camera with video is a nice upgrade and the ability to edit videos is cool.

The Bad.
Where to begin. Well, I'm disappointed with the new iPhone in that I was hoping for a bit of a design change. Not a lot, but just something. The rumor photos had a matte finish which would have been a LOT better than the slippery (and scratch-prone) plastic back of today. I'll get over it though. Update: The new iPhone 3Gs have a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic screen. Whatever the hell that means.

AT&T. Wow, they really dropped the ball here. Two significant new features of the iPhone OS 3 are rendered useless until "sometime this summer". MMS (multimedia messages) gives users the ability to send and receive videos, photos and more via SMS. AT&T is apparently not ready. Tethering allows you to use the iPhone's internet connection. AT&T is not ready for that either. Lastly, existing iPhone 3G users have to wait until they're 1.5 years into their contracts to be eligible for the subsidized pricing. While I can understand and appreciate that they need to recoup what they've invested into the phone, I believe they're missing an opportunity here. I don't know a single iPhone user (and I know a lot of them) that are happy with AT&T. We're all counting down the days to be able to jump ship. Letting current iPhone 3G users upgrade at the subsidized pricing would lock them into another 2 years of painful service. If I've got to wait 6 months for the phone, I might as well wait another 6 months to (god willing) get the new iPhone 3Gs on another carrier. Apple, if you're listening to your users, you WILL NOT renew AT&T's exclusivity another year. Ugh. Update: Gizmodo has told me to quit whining. And they've got a point. I'll shut up now.

Quicktime. Well, the new QuickTime interface looks great, but the new icon is a purple abomination. That's all I've got to say about that.

The In-Between.
The new MacBook Pros. They fall in the "in-between" category. The better battery life, better price, better storage, better RAM and better screen are welcome updates. However, I don't understand the move to rid the computer of the ExpressCard slot and replace it with SD. The only SD device in my home is the Wii. I see no practical use for an SD card reader. "Pro" users who have a camera probably use a DSLR and they use CF cards. While personally I have no need to swap batteries, I can appreciate the need for road warriors who are not always going to be near a charge. Although if you really get 7 hours on a charge, you would think even road warriors would find a charge within 7 hours. I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade to the new model though - for me it's perfect. Better price, larger drives, more RAM, etc. Everything I'd take advantage of. Except that stupid SD card slot.

Find My iPhone. Cool feature and could help a lot of people. The requirement to have the $99 MobileMe sucks.