Apple WWDC Wrap-Up

Quick post to get some thoughts out there about the announcements at this week's World Wide Developer's Conference.

1. iPhone 3G S (the space in between the G and S is annoying): Great incremental improvement, and the new functionality of OS v3 will enable developers to keep the iPhone platform ahead of both Android and Palm. I especially like the Tom Tom GPS application. Kinda bummed that there isn't videoconferencing, though. The price drop is great for expanding the market. I predict continued dominance for 12-18 months.
2. Side note: I've played with a Palm Pre and it's pretty slick. I like some of the gesture-based interaction techniques, like swiping windows off the screen to close them. It also provides nice feedback when you tap by making the screen ripple like water out from the point you tapped. Palm has two challenges: don't totally botch the SDK and make sure that the OS is robust enough to handle the common number of apps that folks will open simultaneously. If they can manage those two things I think they'll have a good product that'll keep Apple honest, but they have to hang on for 12-18 months while building momentum (more developers and apps).
3. AT&T is screwing up big time. It's as if they thought that they could change the rules of the game on Apple after they got their exclusive deal. They've become lazy. Not having MMS or tethering available when a dozen other carriers do? Fail. Look for large numbers of folks to switch to another carrier as soon as the exclusivity period ends and the other carrier's network embraces a variant of GSM.
4. One thing AT&T is getting unfairly dinged on is the upgrade pricing for those folks who've only had their 3G handsets for just a little while. You folks signed a two year agreement, and you knew what the upgrade policy was. Quit whining. Conversely, if AT&T were smart they'd have offered an "upgrade insurance plan" that would let people get the subsidized rate after only 12 months instead of the current 18-24. 
5. The return of FireWire: Huzzah! The 13" unibody MacBook, now called a MacBook Pro, gains a FireWire 800 port. Lack of FireWire was a showstopper for me since all my external drives and media readers are FireWire-based. Now I have a viable choice for a laptop that isn't crippled. Support for up to 8GB of RAM is all sorts of awesome, too.
6. Snow Leopard: The pricing is spot-on (get it?), and I look forward to the functionality and improved performance. Adding full Exchange support only further weakens the allure of Microsoft Office on the Mac. Snow Leopard also leaves the PowerPC architecture behind, which means I'll be buying my first Intel-based Mac sometime between now and September.
7. Hardware price drops: Always welcomed, especially in these tough economic times. My boss at work should be very attracted by the new Air pricing. 

Overall, AT&T provided the only sour note of the whole performance. Kudos to Apple!