It's time for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, one of two occasions each year (along with the Macworld Expo) in which the entire internet joins together for one huge cluster-liveblog. Who am I to argue? I’m live on the scene at WWDC, where “live” means “technically alive” and “on the scene” means “at my desk refreshing other people’s liveblogs while I eat peanut butter straight out of the jar.” On with the show.

1:25 p.m.: Internet finally working again. Hat-tip to Time Warner Cable for the maddening delay. What did I miss? Let's see: eleventy-billion people signed up for the iPhone SDK, developers can use the same APIs Apple does, huge companies love the iPhone because “remote wipe” is now offered as a feature. “Remote wipe” seems like a feature that would come in handy in a lot of contexts. Attention technology innovators: more remote wiping, please.

1:28 p.m.: Jason Snell of Macworld notes on his liveblog, “It’s important to keep in mind that while this is a media event, it’s first and foremost a developer event, so Apple is taking great pains to give some meaty developer information to the thousands of Mac and iPhone developers in the crowd.” Translation: Good lord, this crap is boring so far.

1:32 p.m.: Scott Forstall, Jobs’s top iPhone minion, demonstrates how to make an iPhone application. It’s so easy, even the Senior Vice President of iPhone Software can do it! Forstall throws up a David Pogue quote: “You’re witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform.” Gross.

1:36 p.m.: Now you can do eBays on your iPhone. The eBay guy does a search for “Wii Fit cheap,” bringing up a bunch of auctions selling the equipment for twice the retail price.

1:41 p.m.: Movable Type demos their TypePad software, so I’m liveblogging the liveblogging of a live blogging demo on the iPhone. From Gizmodo: “WordPress tells me their native iPhone app is coming soon, somewhere around the end of the week or early next week.” Now that’s some inspired PR work. I think the WordPress guy should have just stood up when the Movable Type guy was done and screamed, “YEAH, US TOO!!! AT SOME VAGUE POINT IN THE FUTURE, WE WILL ALSO HAVE IPHONE BLOG TYPE THINGS, AND WHATNOT.”

1:45 p.m.: A news-gathering app from the Associated Presszzzzzzzzzz time for a bathroom break. Please bring back Steve Jobs and his patented madcap zaniness!

1:50 p.m.: This water-dripping app from Pangea Software looks pretty cool. Apparently it’s already available for Mac on their website (swamped at the moment). And then Major League Baseball shows off a baseball-scores app — holy crap, sports scores on your phone? Let’s iPhone party like it’s 1999!

1:55 p.m.: Next up in the Endless Parade of Boring Software: two med-student apps in a row. I can’t imagine the crowd isn’t getting restless at this point. “And now we present ‘Valentin Louis,’ a marvelous new app for Proust scholars!”

2:05 p.m.: Forstall took some time to crap on Windows Mobile. Hooray! Everybody’s happy again. That’s what the WWDC is all about, crapping on Microsoft. Kumbaya!

2:08 p.m.: Jobs is back. He used to do the Microsoft-crapping-on himself, but now he leaves that to the underlings. Is he getting too old for this? Jobs says iPhone 2.0 software update will be free for iPhone users, $9.95 for iPod Touch owners. Without even looking, I know that there are between three and four thousand comments on Engadget by now to the effect of “$10 for Touch? This iz outrage!!!” Expect this to be the flashpoint for Apple flamebaiters until the next keynote speech. Note: None of those commenters will actually own an iPod Touch.

2:15 p.m.: Apple marketing VP Phil Schiller gets on stage for a demo and calls Microsoft’s ActiveSync “ActiveStink.” Christ, you thought my “remote wipe” joke was in poor taste. Apple’s alternative is “MobileMe,” with the “Me” part in little cursive font. That name is no great shakes itself, Phil. Let’s see, what rhymes with “MobileMe”…”MobilePee”?! Genius! Oh man, I gotta get over to Gizmodo comment threads before anybody else posts that.

2:19 p.m.: Schiller says you can put all your personal information “in the cloud,” meaning on the Internet. I wouldn’t mind the phrase “in the cloud” dying a noble death. The cloud is fine as far as whiteboard diagrams go, but it’s a little too cutesy for any other context.

2:22 p.m.: So MobileMe is Apple’s replacement for “.Mac,” their very crappy online-services package that has been embarrassing the company for years. This isn’t as boring as the med-student iPhone maps, but still, I can’t get excited about a synchronization app. Oh great, your iPhone photos synchronize with your online MobileMe folders. This is the killer feature for every electronics device. You have to be able to take a photo and send it somewhere else immediately. Apple will not rest until we can cram photos into every crevice of our existence within nanoseconds of hitting the shutter button. Steve Jobs is the Cookie Monster of photos. ME LOVE PHOTOS!

Why? Is Grandma sitting at home on her laptop, hitting F5 like a coke fiend waiting for your MobileMe photo folder to update? Let’s relax, people. Your blurry snapshots from the jumbo slide at the water park are not a top-priority item, whatever you might think.

2:30 p.m.:

The MobileMe logo is awfully lame for an Apple effort. It bears a strong resemblance to the logo for one of the worst Microsoft operating systems ever:

2:37 p.m.: In the past decade or so, Nintendo has gained a reputation for putting out mediocre versions of exciting new products only to make people rebuy the same thing a year later when they finally get it right. The original Game Boy Advance was a tank; the Game Boy Advance SP was a work of art. Ditto for the first Nintendo DS and its successor, the DS Lite. The original iPhone was a beautiful product, but still, I think Apple might be taking notes; the first iPhone inexplicably sported a recessed headphone jack, making it unusable with the majority of non-Apple headphones. The new iPhone 3G has a regular headphone jack, and I want one if for no other reason than being able to use my Sennheiser “cans” with my phone. I do hate that recessed jack so.

Also, the 3G iPhone has, you guessed it, 3G. That’s about a million times faster than EDGE. Now I won’t have to wait so damn long to download my por…um, my technology news websites. Of course, the Achilles Heel of 3G is that the radio eats the battery right quick. Macworld has this:

The iPhone has 5 hours of 3G talk time. [Jobs said,] “That’s actually a very large amount of 3G talk time. We’re very proud of this.” Browsing is 5-6 hours of high-speed browsing. 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. (Small text; “All figures are ‘up to’). [Emphasis added.]

Remember that small text a few months from now when the first class-action lawsuits are filed. “Marge, the 3G iPhone gets five hours of talk time, in theory. In theory, Communism works. In theory.”

2:47 p.m.: The new model has real-time tracking GPS, as well, to save you all that tiresome hassle of “looking around” and “being aware of your surroundings” and “not getting hit by a bus.”

The base model sells for 200 bucks. No joke, that is a good deal. There’s another new line of argument for the trolls: “Haha, all you iPhone owners should have waited for 3G! Now it’s faster AND cheaper. Suckers!” That’s the first rule of computer and gadget purchases: Never buy anything.

2:52 p.m.: And that’s it. iPhone apps, a .Mac replacement, and a 3G iPhone. Exactly what everybody expected, which means that everybody will now be disappointed. Steve Jobs keynotes are always built up as life-changing events, but as with many things, we remember the ones that satisfy the perceived trend and forget the rest. I remember attending the NYC Macworld keynote in 1999, when Jobs introduced the iBook, featuring AirPort. Wireless networking was brand-new then, and when Jobs pulled the little stunt of browsing the Internet while waving a hula hoop around the computer—“no strings attached”—the crowd went nuts. The next year, Jobs unveiled the Power Mac G4 Cube, which ended up being a market failure but was a very exciting machine.

So in 2001, I dragged my roommate Hank with me to the show, assuring him that the keynote was the ultimate stage act in the tech world and that The Great Steve Jobs would not let us down. But he did, and how. The 2001 NYC keynote was a dud, most notorious for an Apple engineer’s interminable explanation of the “megahertz myth.” No kidding, I left the keynote hall mad that day. Steve Jobs had embarrassed me in front of my best friend. How dare he not transform the computer industry according to my whims!

Having gained some perspective since then, I’ve come to accept that sometimes a trade show is just a trade show. Perhaps I’ve lost that deep-down gadget lust; maybe for most observers, the widely predicted announcement of the 3G iPhone was a big deal. But for me, today’s keynote was a reminder that while the tech industry is supposedly fast-paced, most change truly is incremental. A somewhat faster iPhone, a moderately improved syncing service, shinier sports scores on your phone, etc.

We flock to Jobs because once in a great while he does deliver a game-changing touchdown. But more often, to extend the football metaphor, he simply advances the ball down the field enough for a first down. As any gridiron purist will tell you, that’s a pretty impressive feat in itself.