Today was the keynote for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2009. This is an event where traditionally all the new product releases and skunkworks projects underway by Apple are revealed to the world for the first time. Sometimes these events are landmark, such as with the announcement of the iPhone a couple years ago. Sometimes they’re more about incremental improvements to software and hardware, as was the case today. Nearly always, however, they’re exciting news for everyone who likes Apple hardware and software.

Today they made several announcements relevant to web and mobile developers. For starters, Safari 4 is finally out of beta. This is great because it means a faster browser will begin making its way into the hands of users and new features will begin to open up to developers (for example DOM storage).

Last but not least were the iPhone announcements. As expected, iPhone OS 3.0 will now make its way into the hands of customers with over 100 new features for developers and users to drool over, like cut/copy/paste, improved map API’s, more flexible developer API’s, undo support, an improved mail application, and more. On the consumer side, a HUGE new feature (and one that really shocked me actually) is native Internet tethering! This means you can use the Internet connection of your phone on your laptop PC. Another interesting improvement is the integration of a new version of Safari supporting HTML 5 internet streaming of audio and video.

The new “Find My Phone” feature is interesting. If you’re a MobileMe user and you lose your phone, you can log onto a website and it will show you on a map where the phone is. Great if you left it at the bar, but not so helpful if its in your slipper in the broom closet. However it does let you send your phone a message which will cause it to play a special alert, allowing you to track it down in your apartment. Like some ThinkPad PC’s it also supports a remote-wipe feature if your phone is really lost or stolen.

A big thing for application developers is the new In-App Purchase capability. But this is just another one of many new developer features like peer-to-peer connectivity, push notifications, Bluetooth programmability (paving the way for custom bluetooth accessories) among others.

Apparently Apple has opened up the maps restrictions, allowing turn-by-turn direction applications. This is big for custom app developers, but it remains to be seen how this will work with the limitations of the hardware itself.

Speaking of hardware – now for THE BIG NEWS. As expected Apple announced a new hardware spec for the iPhone (called the iPhone 3GS with the S standing for Speed -gong!). This phone is faster and better in just about every way. On an API side it will support OpenGL ES 2.0 (meaning I can finally use that book I bought). It will also have a killer camera app (with tap to focus capability) and a 3MP camera. You can even take video and edit the video right on the phone (works a bit like iMovie). The new phone will offer between 2 and 3x speed improvements for apps (the examples they used were mail, SimCity, and Preview). The phone will also have voice control, letting users call people or bring up apps just by speaking to the phone.

The new phone will have digital compass, although I’m not entirely sure how this would help me. I guess it’s good for mapping applications, or if I need to face Mecca for some reason. The new phone will also have data encryption which is great for business and government users. For battery life, we’re talking 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. Although if we are to base anything on the numbers given for the 3G iPhone, those are probably exaggerated. Bottom line is that battery life appears to be improved about 30%.

As for versioning, it looks like Apple will be keeping the current 3G iPhone as the ‘budget’ option for $99. Kindof a pain for developers, mind-you.

The bottom line here is that Apple has once again moved the bar forward, and put immeasurable pressure on competitors like Palm, Nokia, Microsoft, and Blackberry, and by-proxy Google to keep up on both a hardware and software front. From a developer perspective we’ve got lots of new toys to start building with. Looking forward to it!