Peter Ha and I are at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week (Last week we were at the Google Developers Conference, Google I/O). Right now we are back at the hotel for a breather before heading back into Moscone Center and the 5,200-person madness:

• It’s clear that Apple has three core businesses: Mac, Music and iPhone. Interesting that it considers the iPhone a separate core, not as a part of the Mac platform nor the Music & iPod platform. They definitely seem to have a strategy lined up not just in terms of creating a new product, but for developing a whole new way of computing and the ecosystem to support it.
• 4,000 developers have been admitted to the developer program so far (InsideWork is one of them).
• Apple seems to be attacking the Enterprise through the iPhone, a consumer device. 35% of Fortune 500 are participating in the iPhone Enterprise pilot program. They showed a video interviewing several organizations in this program: Disney, a large law firm, and the US Army.
• Developers demonstrated 7 or 8 native iPhone apps. The capabilities of the iPhone still impress. Compare this to last week when we saw Google pushing the “open web” as their platform of choice at Google I/O. So the continuing question is, which one will prevail: “open web” rich Internet apps, or more powerful but less accessible desktop apps? (Indeed, Apple has released a new rich web app — e-mail, contacts, and calendars — in their new MobileMe service).
• The iPhone 3G was announced, as expected, at $199 for the 8GB model. This gives the middle-class Joe access to a powerful mobile computing device. As this goes mainstream, then commonplace, I wonder how it will change our culture — the same way cell phones have made their mark. How will it change the way we relate to each other and to God?

A recent IW52 post from Dan Wooldridge, Worship of Technology, is a great thing to keep in mind in the midst of all the oohs and ahhs at this conference. Technology is a tool for serving man and God, not an end in itself.

Links

• TechCrunch’s coverage of the 2008 WWDC Keynote