A Temperate WWDC

The 2007 WWDC keynote is now over, and overall it was a temperate, restrained affair. No whiz bang announcements like the iPhone@home or other hardware. Since the WWDC is for developers, software was the emphasis.

Steve Jobs went over 10 features of Leopard with Stacks, a Finder-integrated CoverFlow view, a .Mac enabled Back to my Mac service, Quick Look, built-in Boot Camp, and a few other updates. The funniest part was Steve pricing out Leopard. He told the audience that Apple is releasing a basic version, a premium version, a business version, and an ultimate version (poking fun at the versions of Vista), each selling for $129.

There was a “one more thing” moment where Steve showed off Safari for Windows. Yes, another web browser for the Windows platform. Just supposed to be more better than Internet Explorer or FireFox.

This was followed by a “one last thing” which was boring to me but could be big for iPhone developers. Steve outlined how developers can add their own apps to the iPhone safely without breaking the phone or the AT&T cell network. Again, boring for me, but potentially big for the iPhone market.

But I do now see why Apple announced Safari for Windows. Since the iPhone runs Safari and developers will use Safari to build their own apps, why not give Safari to Windows to entice more iPhone development? So Safari for Windows is more a Trojan horse of attracting Windows developers to the iPhone platform.

For a full rundown of the WWDC keynote, check out Engadget’s excellent coverage.

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