And law firms, probably.

As previously tweeted, Heath Ledger was phenomenal — when he wasn’t channeling Harry Solomon from 3rd Rock from the Sun. I couldn’t completely immerse myself in his maniacal take when I kept expecting a message from The Big Giant Head.

Awesome movie, not hugely enjoyable (and I love dark). Iron Man won this round.

The keynote itself was something of a let down. No new, non-wussy (as opposed to the Mac Mini), non-sissy (as opposed to the iMac) mid-range desktop, no MacBook EEE, no “one more thing”. I mean, really, after he pulled that stunt and introduced the I-still-want-one-btw G4 Cube back in 2000, he set a bar of expectation he’s not likely to clear or live down any time soon (although he did come close last year).

But it’s the iPhone 3G that’s really got me going, “Ooh, bulk delete. Big. Whoop.”

Sure, there’s more to it than that, but do they really think they’re “taking it to the next level” with this thing?

Seriously, dude, we know 3G is faster. No need to convince us. We’re the choir. In fact, we were the preachers when you were still in the choir.

Yes, the styling still trumps all, but the hardware feature set is woefully previous gen in the mobile phone industry. And while the interaction and integration on the software side have always impressed, I expected more from a company with significant experience in producing a full-fledged, mass-market desktop operating system. It’s not like they’ve never done an address book or an email application before. So why are the little things which make these useful and usable 2.0 features when they could have been – should have been – in 1.0?

GPS, contact search, enterprise support, iWork/Office doc support, image saving, a decent headphone jack… can you honestly tell me no one thought of any of these things in the two and half years they were putting together the first iPhone?

The App Store looks promising, but if they really think “there’s never been anything like it… for getting apps from developers to users” then they weren’t paying attention to the iPhone hacking community which produced something that matches Apple’s offering practically feature for feature. That’s a real shame considering the broad range of innovative and useful applications that community produced.

The integrated experience mobileme is set to offer actually looks pretty cool. Not €99-a-year cool, but I have to admit it was pretty slick. That demo had to be one of the most impressive displays of leveraging Ajax technologies to create a supremely seamless user experience. But OTA syncing isn’t exactly new. And there are providers who offer free Exchange services out there. Although, really, it’s the €99 I’m having trouble with.

Oh, and the “big news”… $199. Thud!

C’mon. The only way you can believe you can pay just that much for an iPhone 3G is if you actually also believe you can get it for just €1 in Germany. A $199 subsidized iPhone 3G doesn’t cost half a $399 iPhone with a pay-as-you-go/prepaid contract.

So, the iPhone 3G, not exactly next-level – some would argue it’s barely entry-level.

… bet you’re ass I’m getting one. But I’m thinking, as with the first one, I’ll hang back and wait a while. Unless, you know, I don’t….

My daily Go Gear’s seen some sophisticated upgrades since I first posted about it. The most significant of which has got to be the MacBook Air which replaced the 2.16GHz black MacBook.

(flickr-noted version)

The Air

Sleek and engineered to new heights of slick, this thing is so light I initially found myself having to repeatedly check I’d packed it at all. The TFT LED back-lit display is absolutely glorious, the solid-state drive feels zippier, and the back-lit keyboard is the perfect balance of springy and squishy — and, you know, it glows.

They did leave out a bunch of features to keep this thing manila-envelope-friendly, but it was mostly stuff I’ve never used on the Blakbook or could easily do without. So I’m actually happy to have traded all that in for the refreshing strap burn relief.

And for all the bum reviews this thing’s been getting, the Air (Amihan on my home network) makes an undeniably great OS X portable for the lightweight Mac work I do away from home. I’m as intrigued by the EEE PC and the competition it’s spawned as the next geek, but for running OS X, this is the one for me.

The Sleeve

Manila Mac’s AirMail Sleeve was a no-brainer. Similar and somewhat slicker sleeves were recently announced (really liking Timbuk2′s Steve Sleeve and definitely getting the Incase Neoprene number eventually) but these guys were first to market with an idea I’m positive occurred to a whole lot of people who saw his Steveness pull the Air out of that envelope (it did to me). For that, they get mad props and my business.

Not a fan of the cheapish, bright red string it came with (I’ll be replacing it with some sort of leather cord once I find one), but it’s perfect for protecting the Air from minor dings and scratches while in transit. And the cleverness doesn’t get old.

The Bag

I had my gear banging around the Timbuk2 Blogger for a while but it seemed ridiculous to carry around a bag that weighs almost as much as the laptop. And there was suddenly all this space I wasn’t using. I switched to the Perry Ellis Full Flap Messenger for a while but, even though it weighed just right, it seemed too formal for every day carry and I’d grown partial to the vertical orientation.

I lucked out on a small Tucano Fina at a local Mac store. Italian leather and nylon with a zippered headphone cable passage on the strap — which I’m sure would have been useful if I was still using a separate player for music (the iPhone stays in my pocket, thanks). It fit the Air + AirMail like a glove and carried incredibly well with minimal hip bounce for such a light bag. Unfortunately, it hardly fit anything else. With the Air’s power adapter and the portable hard drive packed, it was practically bursting at the seams.

Thanks largely to Flickr, I discovered the Tom Bihn line of bags and fell for the Ristretto Messenger. Made for 13-inchers, it’s a narrow bag which fits the Air perfectly in its heavily padded laptop compartment. It features enough pockets to fit and compartmentalize my essentials and has just enough space for the occasional magazine or book. It’s pretty much the bag I’ve been looking for ever since I started toting a laptop.

The Storage

My trusty 3-year old Transcend Storejet finally bought it when I let gravity have its way with it one time too many. But I don’t carry any data that isn’t backed up either at home, at the office, or on the cloud so at least it was a relatively minor hardware loss.

Just so happened that the 250GB Lacie Mobile’s were on sale, so I grabbed one over lunch, brought it home later, and immediately loaded it up with every episode of West Wing ever aired. Hey, you never know when you could use a healthy dose of script-writing awesome. And having gotten used to the 80GB Storejet, I still had space to spare for the data I usually carried.

The Other Stuff

The rest is pretty much standard fare:

• a large-size squared Moleskine for wireframing and doodling
• a pocket-size ruled reporter Moleskine for notes and looking busy in meetings
• the requisite Apple doodads: video adapter, Apple remote, iPhone cable
• a Sandisk MobileMate SD+ because it’s proven to come in handy
• some USB drives
• some stuff to write with
• various keys for getting into places
• a Wacom Bamboo tablet comes along every so often too

Go Gear 2.0

So, there you have it, 2.0. Light enough for every day carry, more than enough juice for meetings, conferences and presentations, and everything I need for doing low-end work away from work or home.

I imagine my muggability profile has gone a level up.