Steve Jobs’ WWDC 2008 keynote: how was it for you?

Steve Jobs’ 90 minute keynote at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) last night lived up to all my expectations - and then some.

It kicked off, of course, with the final release of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, which brings added functionality and a slew of third-party apps that range from the fun (Super Monkey Ball! Puzzle games. Yay!) to the business-y and then the bizarre: Medical apps? On an iPhone? Really?

To be honest the first hour or so dragged quite badly - a lot of the announcements and demos had been trailed at Macworld 2008 in January, and there were few new surprises.

MobileMe

Of the surprises, one of the biggest was MobileMe - a new cloud-based service that enables you to keep important stuff like your address book, calendar and emails synchronised on your iPhone, on your Mac and on your PC.

Now Apple’s been touting synchronisation for years with its .mac service - but this time it’s promising something that actually works.

I’ve lost count of the number of times .mac messed up my data, or simply didn’t bother to sync it at all. MobileMe looks like a fresh start. It had better be good.

Of course, Apple marketing VP Phil Schiller couldn’t resist having a dig at Windows Mobile’s synchronisation efforts: ‘ActiveStink’. Funny.

iPhone 3G

But the keynote really kicked off into overdrive when Steve Jobs finally started talking up the iPhone 3G - the thing we’ve all been longing for since the original iPhone made its debut in January 2007.

In typical fashion he teased us by telling us what it was we wanted - and then delivered a series of one-two punches that gave us all exactly what we were hoping for. It was like our having all our Christmases on a single day.

“What are the next challenges?”

“3G.”

“Second: enterprise support, third: third party apps, fourth: we need to sell it in more countries...”

“And last, but not least, we need to make it more affordable.”

“Today we’re introducing the iPhone 3G.”

The assembled crowd of developers, Mac watchers all over the globe predictably went wild. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

But then the good stuff keeps coming - GPS, class-leading 3G performance, metal buttons to control volume, improved battery life... worldwide availability in just one month’s time!

The downside

Were there any disappointments? Sure:

• I still have to wait another month for my shiny iPhone 3G. That’s four weeks of almost unbearable anticipation.
• MobileMe looks lickably good, but I can’t get my hands on it yet either.
• Those third-party apps are going to be a long time coming too!

D’oh!

How can Apple do this to us?

One more thing...

Snow Leopard.

Steve Jobs only gave it a cursory mention at the start of his keynote, but the next version of OS X (notice how they've dropped the Mac tag now?) is going to be an absolute blast - faster, more capable, much more secure, with theoretical support for up to 16TB of RAM and totally multi-processor aware.

By the time Windows 7 comes out in 2010, Apple will be so far ahead of the curve, Microsoft won’t even be able to hang on to its coat-tails.

Still Apple’s thrown Ballmer a carrot, of sorts. Native Microsoft Exchange 2007 will now be included in the next version of OS X.

Shame we’ll have to wait another 12 months to get it.

What did you think of Steve Jobs’ keynote? What would you have liked Apple to do differently, better, more? Let us know! Write in with your comments below