Lower prices, better stuff. How cool is that?

Brad Stone and Jenna Wortham have an article in The New York Times about the latest iPhone:

Apple offered its devoted fans their periodic supply of catnip on Monday with a new version of the iPhone, called the iPhone 3G S. Apple announced some things that were characteristically Apple: more, better, faster features on its smartphones and computers. It also announced something that was not: lower prices.
The company said the third model of its hit phone, which looks physically identical to the last version but includes internal hardware and software improvements, will go on sale on 19 June. Among the changes, the iPhone 3G S will have a three-megapixel camera that also records video, an internal digital compass, and voice-control features that let owners use spoken commands to make calls and play music.
The S stands for speed, and upgraded internal components will allow the device to run more than twice as fast as the previous model, according to Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide product marketing. Mr. Schiller delivered much of the keynote presentation at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, a meeting of Apple software makers that will last through Friday. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, was not present, as some commentators had expected. Mr. Jobs is on a six-month medical leave and is not expected to return until later this month.
The iPhone 3G S, which will be available in both black and white, is priced at $199 for the 16-gigabyte version and $299 for the 32-gigabyte version. A spokesman for AT&T, Apple’s exclusive iPhone partner in the United States, said that for now, it would not change the monthly prices on its iPhone voice and data plans.
Apple also announced it would sell the previous eight-gigabyte iPhone 3G for a price of $99, reduced from $199, on top of data and voice plans. That could make the iPhone accessible to cost-conscious consumers and undercut competitors like Palm. Palm’s new smartphone, the Pre, which went on sale Saturday, costs $199 after a mail-in rebate. Sprint, which is selling the Pre exclusively, offers a two-year service contract that is cheaper than the one AT&T offers for the iPhone. “This puts a lot of pressure on the likes of RIM and Palm,” said Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company, referring to the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. “It sorts of upsets Palm’s apple cart two days after the launch of the Pre.”
Apple also used the industry gathering to announce new features and price cuts on its MacBook Pro line of laptops. All new MacBook Pros will feature up to seven hours of battery life— a forty percent increase from the last version, because of the new lithium-ion batteries Apple is using. The new batteries are sealed into the laptops, as opposed to the removable batteries that have been in previous MacBooks. Apple is saying the power units can be recharged up to 1,000 times— up to three times as much as other batteries. New MacBook Pros will also feature an SD memory-card slot for simpler photo transfers.
The new, lower prices suggest the company is taking aim at recession-wary consumers and is willing to sacrifice at least some profit to increase its share of the market for personal computers. But Apple did not budge on prices significantly. For example, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro now costs $1,699, or $300 less than the previous version. “I think there was a recognition that their prices are becoming increasingly disconnected from the market,” said Toni Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “But this was not a bold step into new price points.”
AT&T said iPhone owners with existing contracts would have to pay more to upgrade to a new phone: $499 for the eight-gigabyte, $599 for the 16-gigabyte and $699 for the 32-gigabyte. However, current customers who are eligible for upgrades and those whose contracts have expired would pay the same price as a new customer, said Mark Siegel, executive director of media relations for AT&T mobility and consumer markets. The original iPhone was sold two years ago.
TomTom, the maker of GPS systems for cars or personal use, also made a presentation at the conference, in which it said it was introducing a portable navigation application and car kit to provide drivers with turn-by-turn directions. TomTom executives were acknowledging that the iPhone and other smartphones were killing its market for stand-alone GPS hardware and that the company was entering the accessories and applications business.
The new software for the iPhone also pushed the device more clearly into the portable game console arena occupied by Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP. In what looks like another play for the iPhone to resemble a handheld gaming device, the new peer-to-peer connection feature will locate nearby users using Bluetooth and connect the two using Wi-Fi, allowing them to compete in various games.
Much of Apple’s presentation was devoted to software, both for the Macintosh computer and the iPhone. The company said a new version of its operating system for the Macintosh, called Snow Leopard, would be available in September. It will cost $29 for current Mac owners to upgrade and the operating system will be shipped with all new Macs.
Snow Leopard includes new features that include enhanced global search that can now read URLs and text in Web pages; better compatibility with Microsoft Exchange, the dominant e-mail system used in businesses; and faster computing over all.
Apple also said the new version of the iPhone’s operating system, iPhone OS 3.0, will be made available free to current iPhone owners beginning 17 June. The software will have more than one hundred new features, including capabilities for multimedia messaging; cut, copy and paste tools; and search functions. It will also unlock features developers have eagerly awaited, like the ability to buy virtual goods or new gaming levels within applications.

Rico says all that but still no Steve Jobs...