What did Goldman have to say? Forget the underwhleming new version of OS X, AT&T's crippling of the best new iPhone OS features or the hubub about iPhone upgrade prices: The conference was a "home run." Video:

In another case of tech pundit disassembly, a different tipster was thrilled to find this picture of Walt Mossberg's bald spot on Gizmodo's liveblog:

Speculation had been thick that Jobs would put in a cameo at the conference. Late last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the CEO would likely return to Apple at the end of June, as planned, and might drop by today's event.

Instead, Jobs left senior VP Phil Schiller to handle his second major Apple event without the CEO.

Even barring a brief on-stage appearance, Jobs, at the tail end of his medical leave, had other options. He'd have been great for demonstrating the video camera on the new iPhone, for example, via a recorded greeting for the conference keynote audience.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.But if this is Apple without Jobs, it doesn't look so terrible. Early indications are that the company's new products will receive the customary lavish attention in the mainstream press, even though anyone who's got the old model will have to fork over at least $500 for the upgrade (read the fineprint) and the best new software features are still useless for American customers. Just like Apple's stock, the company's products can still muster cultlike interest, even in the cult leader's absence.

First, Apple said it was upgrading iTunes to allow movie rentals and the purchase of TV shows on the mobile device, just like on desktop versions of iTunes.

Potentially more promising for the print media is the newly-added ability to purchase content from within iPhone applications. A startup called Scrollmotion demonstrated from Apple's stage its forthcoming reader software and boasted it would offer 50 major magazines, 170 daily newspapers and 1 million books. Esquire, ESPN and Bon Appetit were pictured inside the app.

Magazine and newspaper publishers might prefer to put together their own iPhone store, just as the TV studios set up the video-sharing site Hulu. Apple's terms would let them keep 70 percent of the sale price of their content — a pretty good deal in comparison to selling content on the Kindle, where Amazon and its wireless carrier reportedly keep close to 70 percent of the money.

The real question, though, isn't the mechanics of selling content on an iPhone app, but how publishers will get people to buy content often available free a couple of clicks away, on the Web, where it often includes goodies like links, comments and video that actually make it better than the printed product.

(Picture by Brian Lam via Gizmodo Liveblog)

It came via Twitter! The microblogging service is notorious for its downtime, but is thus far holding up like a real trouper. Wonders never cease.

UPDATE: The social news network is back. For now.

Writes the Journal:

Two people who do business with Apple said senior Apple managers have told them the company is now trying to coordinate Mr. Jobs's return with a product launch or public event.

The prospect of a public return by Apple's CEO, following a six-month medical leave, will no doubt help build buzz for the company's developer event, where Apple is expected to launch a new iPhone into a barrage of free publicity.

But the inside information leaked to the Journal also helps highlight how traumatic Jobs' health scare has been for him and his company — despite past indications to the contrary.

Apple once attributed Jobs' rail-thin appearance to a "common bug." When later announcing his medical leave, Jobs avoided disclosing the seriousness of the situation, saying he was leaving due to the complexity of his health issues and even because of the distracting "curiosity" over them."

But things got pretty bad, at least according to the Journal's well-placed source. Select members of Apple's board received weekly updates about his condition, a "person familiar with the matter" told the paper, and they wouldn't have all been pretty:

He was one real sick guy... Fundamentally he was starving to death over a nine-month period. He couldn't digest protein. [But] he took corrective action.

From a PR standpoint, it seems unlikely Apple's directors and executives would want Jobs up on any stage until he looks as healthy as he feels. But the CEO is notoriously headstrong about these sorts of things. If he wants to show up Monday, he will.

Clever of Stone, in a post promising increased Apple-related Twitter usage won't bring the site down, to suggest that Twitter and Apple are up to something together. Especially after past hints of a Twitter-Apple collaboration had the companies' mutual fanboys so revved up.

Web applications on iPhone:
Loren Feldman, video blogger, 1938 Media: "It means that suddenly your Palm sucks. It suddenly means that Symbian and every other phone OS is basically useless... This is a real game changer."

John Gruber, Mac writer, Daring Fireball: "If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it. Don't tell us how lucky we are and that it's going to taste delicious."

Safari on Windows:
Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac author, Wired: "There's only one problem with that scenario — Safari sucks. A lot of Mac users won't run the browser (I'm one of them), so why would anyone run it on Windows?"

Daniel Waylonis, Google developer: ""They've got a lot of support," he said. "People are really excited about Safari on Windows... WebKit has the strength of Apple behind it," he said. "And Nokia. It has the potential to become the universal browser."

Paul Thurott, on Safari, disagreeing with himself:
"But I don't think shipping a Windows version of Safari has anything to do with market share, per se. No, Jobs has something more dramatic in mind for Safari."

"When using a browser limits what you can do online, you don't use it. Simple. Hopefully, Apple will address these issues and I can reassess the situation. But right now, Safari is a non-starter."

Text Rendering in Safari:
Jeff Hicks, designer, Hicks Design: "Its wonderful looking at a website on XP, and seeing gorgeous text smoothing."

Jeff Atwood, developer, Coding Horror: "That said, I'm curious why Apple's default font rendering strategies, to my eye — and to the eyes of at least two other people — are visibly inferior to Microsoft's on typical LCD displays. This is exactly the kind of graphic designer-ish detail I'd expect Cupertino to get right, so it's all the more surprising to me that they apparently haven't."

Guy Kawasaki, returning to the scene of the crime (the creation of his image), does carry some interest, and certainly his personal coverage could yield unique insight as a former high-profile Apple employee. But feeding this coverage through Truemors is merely sad and desperate. Each site providing coverage has their own pros and cons (speed, heavy traffic, accuracy, detail, wit), but anyone tuning into Truemors as their primary source for Jobs WWDC keynote is as delusional as Kawasaki. (Of course, I will tune in to see how his stunt pans out.)