An Android User’s Take On Yesterday’s iPhone News

Yesterday's Apple keynote was, I think more than ever, a testament to Steve Jobs's presentation skills. Faced with an audience that had already seen the grand finale , he still had no trouble evoking plenty of gleeful gasps and applause. He even managed to make the now-infamous Wifi glitch amusing and entertaining (if a bit odd), rather than painfully awkward. But despite all of his showmanship and a very impressive new product, the keynote wasn't quite the game changer that I expected. I don't mean to say I found the iPhone 4 to be disappointing — it will be incredibly successful, and many of my friends are chomping at the bit to get one. But I expected to walk out of San Francisco's Moscone Center yesterday longing for the next iPhone despite my current allegiance to Android. That didn't happen. A few weeks ago, an Apple zealot emailed Steve Jobs asking him if Apple had any WWDC announcements that would "blow [Google] out of the water". Jobs responded, "you won't be disappointed." To me, it sounded like Jobs was hinting at something major — a feature or service or device that was simply so much better than Android that it would feel like the G1 vs. iPhone 3G days all over again, when the iPhone was vastly superior. But instead of launching a nuke, Apple's announcements were a strong but survivable offensive against Android; a retaliation for the recent attacks at Google I/O . Apple has taken the lead once again, but I don't think Android will be playing catchup for long.