WWDC: The Day After

PC World - The WWDC keynote is behind us, and you know what that means: scores of bloggers and tech analysts playing Monday Tuesday Morning Pundit. To simplify things, I've decided to grade yesterday's announcements using one of today's most popular Internet memes--EPIC WIN, WIN, FAIL, and EPIC FAIL. It should be fairly self-evident how this scale works. Enough with the formalities; let's dig in.

MacBook Pro updates and price drops: WIN. Er, Mostly.

Who doesn't like price drops and speed bumps? Also, I can't argue with the addition of Firewire 800 ports and SD Card slots on the new MacBook Pros. I can argue with the removal of the ExpressCard slot on the 15-inch model and the non-removable batteries, though, so this isn't quite EPIC WIN.

Snow Leopard: WIN.

Snow Leopard is a little thin on end-user features, so it may leave some users disappointed at first, but if Snow Leopard lives up to its billing as being faster and more streamlined, don't expect that disappointment to last very long.

Snow Leopard pricing: EPIC WIN.

Snow Leopard isn't as big a release as Leopard was (and arguably not as big as Windows 7, at least from an end-user's perspective), but at $29 for Mac OS X Leopard users, the upgrade price is hard to beat.

iPhone OS 3.0: WIN.

There's a lot to like here, although some of it should have been there from the start.. Say it with me now: cut, copy, paste! And notes finally sync back to your computer--what a novel concept!

iPhone 3G S: WIN. But that name?

There are some welcome improvements and new features, but the name will probably cause some confusion, and I'm sure we were all expecting some sort of cosmetic tweaks.

$99 iPhone 3G: EPIC WIN.

An iPhone? For $100? Could it be any clearer that Apple is out for world domination in the smartphone market?

AT&T: EPIC FAIL. Sorry, guys.

AT&T didn't exactly endear itself to iPhone users yesterday. Confusing pricing scheme for upgrading customers. Lame. No MMS for iPhone customers until later this summer. Even lamer. No tethering support for now. Exceedingly lame. Sure, there may be reasons for AT&T's inability to deliver tethering and MMS out of the gate, but try telling that to eager iPhone owners.

No Steve Jobs update: FAIL.

Don't get me wrong, I know that he won't be back until the end of the month. And I think Jobs' privacy should be respected. But at least some sort of status update would've been good to hear, even if it was a quick opener of "Steve's feeling great, and he's looking forward to coming back later this month," just to reassure Apple-watchers that Jobs' recovery is on track.

Overall: WIN.

A solid suite of updates, if a little predictable. It would've been nice to see Apple pull out something completely unexpected. There's always the next Apple media event for that, I suppose.