It may not be everything many people were hoping for, but Apple announced a new iPhone Monday at WWDC, the iPhone 3GS.

“The S stands for speed,” said Phil Schiller, Apple CIO, telling the keynote crowd, “It’s the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. What’s inside is entirely new. It’s a REALLY fast iPhone. Everything you do will have incredible speedups.”

The new hardware looks very similar to the current 3G model, but sports a 3 megapixel autofocus camera with video capability.

The new camera is not forward-facing as many hoped it might be, but its autofocus features a cool tap-to-focus functionality. Tap on the part of the photo you want to focus on, and it automatically focuses to that point of the image. It also automatically handles exposure and white balance. It’s got better low-light sensitivity and an auto-macro feature, with the ability to focus on things as close as 10cm away.

The phone’s camera application has a switch that swaps between still photo and video mode, supporting 30FPS, VGA with audio, auto-focus, auto-white balance and auto-exposure.

Other performance upgrades include:

• voice control: “Call Scott Forstall” — if there is more than one entry, it will ask which one you want (i.e. home, office, etc) — or for the iPod function: “play The Killers”
• digital compass: the compass app shows your orientation, has integration with Maps — if you double click, the map will reorientate itself
• new accessibility options — VoiceOver for content and controls, zooming, color inversion, mono audio, etc.
• instant remote wipe
• encrypted iTunes backups
• business friendly data encryption
• promised improved battery life. The iPhone will now get up to 9 hours of internet surfing, 10 hours of video, 30 hours of audio, 12 hours of 2g talk-time, 5 hours of 3g talk-time, which, if true, is a major upgrade.

The iPhone 3GS will be available June 19th in two models: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. The existing 8GB 3G model will remain available and sell for $99 beginning today.

Apple’s Scott Forstall just showed off the previously-rumored Find My iPhone feature in the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Find My iPhone is a MobileMe service that helps you find your lost iPhone, or wipe it remotely.

The service allows you to send the iPhone an alert sound that will play even if the phone is in silent mode — good for finding it in the back of the couch. It will also display a message on the home screen, such as another phone number, in case a stranger found it and the screen is locked. Clever.

If you think the phone has been permanently lost or stolen, you can also wipe all the data remotely. And if it shows up again, you can restore from a backup.

Snow Leopard — Apple’s next major operating system update, which looks friggin’ awesome — will cost just $29 for current Leopard users.

Apple usually charges $130 for major operating system upgrades, but Apple says it wants to encourage everyone to upgrade. Snow Leopard will be available in Septmeber (developers at WWDC get a near-finished version today.)

Snow Leopeard will run on all Intel hardware, even the older stuff, and includes a ton of under-the-hood tweaks and improvements. At WWDC, Apple’s top software honcho, Bertrand Serlet, demonstrated a ton of cool speed enhancements and nice interface tweaks, including a sleek update of QuickTime. Serlet showed how Snow Leopard will double the speed of some tasks while trimming about 6GBytes of disk space.

A family pack will cost $49.

Apple’s first big product announcement at Monday’s WWDC Keynote was an all-new 15″ MacBook with an all-new display and built-in battery.

Starting at $1699, the new notebook computer is the fastest notebook Apple has ever made. With up to 3.06 Dual Core CPU, up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive, the device also comes with an optional 256GB Solid State Drive.

The audience at WWDC could hardly contain itself as Apple CIO Phil Schiller continued to detail upgrades to the company’s entire notebook line: The 17″ MacBook Pro has also been updated — 2.8GHz CPU, 500GB HD; it retains the ExpressCard Slot.

The biggest news, however could be the new 13″ notebook. The 13″ MacBook is now called a MacBook Pro. It starts at $1,199. Cheaper than the MacBook it replaces, it gets the new display specs, an SD card slot and Firewire is back! Ranges from $1,199 to $1,499 in standard configurations.

All products are shipping today.

The number of Mac users has tripled in the last two years, Phil Schiller just said at WWDC.

There were 25 million active OS X users in first 5 years of OS X, up until 2007, Schiller said. But in the last two years, however, it has grown to 75 million.

“We’ve TRIPLED the number of users,” he said to big applause. “It’s astounding.”

Taking Steve Jobs at his original word – that web apps would make the best use of iPhone and iPod Touch capabilities – iPorn launched Monday a new web app developed using Apple’s iPhone specifications and applying its unique accelerometer and touch navigation.

As Apple prepares to open the doors on WWDC in San Francisco on Monday and possibly announce a new video-capable iPhone, few may be as excited about the possibilities to come as the adult entertainment industry.

The iPorn app is loaded with social networking features such as high-res video streaming, the ability to post and share photos and videos, create member profiles, exchange private messages and more. Registered users can personally interact with amateur and professional adult performers via live video webcams, chat and mobile texting. Members can send adult videos from the website to their iPhone or iPod Touch-equipped friends. Versions optimized for other mobile phones, such as the Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre, are expected to follow later this summer.

To help celebrate iPhone 3.0 firmware and the possibility of video-capable mobile devices from Apple, iPorn is sending the iPorn Bikini Girls to Moscone Center in a high-tech iPorn-equipped vehicle for free photo ops with conference attendees. Later in the evening the company will host an (unofficial) 9-hour launch party at San Francisco’s famed Gold Club, just a block away from the conference site at Moscone Center West.

The party, which will go from 5:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., is open to WWDC attendees, investors, and media.

It’s no secret the adult entertainment industry has often been at the forefront of technology, producing some of the Internet’s most sophisticated websites and multimedia-rich user user experiences well ahead of many more mainstream and socially acceptable industries.

It’s therefore no surprise the porn industry will among the first fully equipped to let users get the most out of Apple’s innovations in mobile device technology.

We’re now less than two weeks away from the keynote of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple is widely expected to demonstrate a next-generation iPhone for the first time. I won’t run down all the anticipated features here, but suffice it to say that we’re looking at largely incremental updates on the hardware side: faster processor, more RAM, more storage, and maybe a programmable magnetometer to enable true turn-by-turn GPS. It will be the iPhone, but better — and almost certainly not a worthwhile upgrade if you already own an iPhone 3G, since it will also benefit from the release of iPhone OS 3.0.

But the world hasn’t stood still. For the first time since the announcement of the original iPhone, there are legitimate competitors all around, many of them even approaching Apple’s thinking in creating a holistic ecosystem of supporting software, third-party development and services. There are three big threats to the rise of the iPhone right now: Palm Pre, mass availability of Android, and the Zune HD platform. Hit the jump to get the full story.

CC-licensed photo by Dario Melpignano.

Steve Jobs will not headline Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June as many fans had hoped.

Instead, a team of executives led by Phil Schiller will deliver the keynote, according to an Apple press release issued Wednesday morning.

The news is a big blow to Apple fans, who were hoping Jobs would mark his return to Apple with a big splashy appearance at the conference.

Jobs took six months medical leave in January to focus on his health, which had appeared to be in serious decline during 2008. In public appearances, Jobs appeared alarmingly gaunt and thin. Jobs said he would return to work at the end of June, but many hoped he might make an earlier appearance at the week-long programmers conference, which will start on Monday, June 8.

The full press release after the jump.

Via Gizmodo.

Chalk up one more exhibit for the case that Apple and its ecosystem refuse to participate in the global economic meltdown.

WWDC sold out Tuesday, the earliest date on record for which the annual conference devoted to Apple’s development community has reached capacity. Tickets went on sale just a month ago, and were no bargain — even the early-bird special was well over $1,000.

Interest in this year’s event is great for a number of reasons. Developers and presumably the audience at the keynote will get the first public glimpse of OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard.” The new OS has been in testing with developers for a while now, but many of the expected user interface changes remain under wraps. WWDC may be the first time anyone gets a real look at those.

Even bigger than Snow Leopard, however is the possibility that Apple could unveil a new version of the iPhone, even a touchscreen netbook or tablet. The rumor mill on all of these ideas has been active for months.

And of course there is the ever present shadow of Steve Jobs. Will he make an appearance, even tough he’s not scheduled to return from his sabbatical until the end of June? Could he possibly bear – health permitting – to let someone else introduce a major OS upgrade and potentially game-changing hardware?

The Jobs factor aside, the real takeaway from WWDC’s full house next month is the clear evidence that interest in Apple’s technology remains very strong. The idea that someone could found a career or hit the jackpot on the strength of learning how to develop applications that work with Apple technology seems to be one of the few – and one of the brightest – lights of hope on the economic horizon.

Maybe you want a widget that counts down the days until WWDC09. If you do, you can get it here.

If not, never mind.