The Cult of the Cool Mac: Made with 100% USDA real meat!

The keynote has come and gone with hardly a whisper of innovation. In brief, there's a 17-inch LCD iMac coming. There's no speed-boost, and really no change at all for Apple's desktops or laptops. iTools will now cost $100 per year as the rebranded dot-Mac. The rumors were right that Apple will ship a new iPod with a 20-gig hard drive.

Jobs did show off the new QuickTime 6, OS X 10.2, iTunes 3 and .Mac, but on a "Steve-scale," the keynote hit about a 3 out of 10. More details on specific keynote-announcements will follow.

My first reaction: This year, the rumor sites have been warning that Apple had no gee-whiz new product announcements, but Steve's keynote was more lacking than I would have believed possible! Additionally, I have no reason to spend $100 per year for each of my my iTools accounts when there are free e-mail and online-storage services available elsewhere. I think that charging for basic iTools services is a mistake that will ultimately hurt Apple.

I owe Stacey $5 bucks.