WWDC 2007 keynote thoughts

Overall, less than I was hoping for but about on par with most of the keynotes over the past few years, where expectations have been set so high that nearly anything (except for, possibly, the iPhone) comes across as a disappointment.

Leopard

The new UI touches and file management functionality looks cool (though it won't be possible to really "get it" without trying it). "Back to My Mac" looks like a nice touch and a refreshing, new use for the otherwise stagnant .Mac. Everything else (Spaces, Time Machine, and so forth) will almost certainly be well implemented and nice, evolutionary advances to the platform.

But now that we know the "whole story" about Leopard, with its "top secret" features supposedly revealed, I definitely feel underwhelmed. I suspect (really more like hope) that there are a number of additional revelations coming down the line, like more details about iPhone integration, significant advances to .Mac functionality and Web 2.0-type services (possibly through a partnership with Google), some big-time improvements to iLife, and some under-the-hood new tech (such as pervasive use of ZFS). There was definitely a sense that even though today was supposed to be the big reveal, there is still more to be revealed. There has to be, right?

It's ironic, because Leopard really does represent the biggest advance in any single version of OS X, and I bet it will be great and make everything that came before it seem primitive. But the way it's been positioned, with its initial PR launch a year ago and the lure of "top secret" features, the longer than usual gap between it and Tiger, and the release delay to October of 2007, expectations were set too high.

Safari on Windows

Huh? I didn't see this coming, and it's hard to get excited about it. If Firefox didn't exist, this would be a great thing, but Firefox on Windows is "a good thing" and Safari will now be competing with it, and I don't really see the end-user or community benefit.

However, now that Apple has opened a third party development path for the iPhone that relies on Safari, it does make sense to provide Safari to Windows users if for no other reason than to serve as a development environment.

Apps on the iPhone

Which brings us to the announcement that Web 2.0 sites accessed through Safari represent the initial round of development opportunities on the iPhone.

What?

This whole thing reminds me of the Chris Rock routine that went something like this:

"They'll say something like, “Yeah, well I take care of my kids.” You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker. “I ain't never been to jail.” Whaddya want? A cookie? You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!"

Of COURSE the iPhone is going to support cool Web 2.0 apps- if it didn't, it would be seriously compromised as a "breakthrough Internet device" that doesn't offer the "watered down" Internet. It's SUPPOSED TO do those things by default.

I was hoping for some sort of Widget API, which would seem to be the best and most secure path to offering next-gen apps on the iPhone, and the "Web 2.0" announcement really comes across like a total cop-out.

But, anyway, we'll see what happens. I hope to see some new hardware functionality soon, I'd love to see multi-touch support brought to the Mac, and I really want Apple to Web 2.0-ify all of the cool Mac features so that I'm not so tied down to a single computer. I think these things are coming, just not quite as soon as I'd like to see them.