Despite the hoopla over the iPhone and iPod, Apple struggles to drum up excitement over its core Mac hardware and OS X. And this, says Seb Janacek, could be bad in the long run.

By Steve Jobs' high standards it was an underwhelming keynote address on Monday at Apple's annual developer conference.

It's not the first time, either. At the same event 12 months ago the Apple CEO said he was keeping Mac OS X Leopard's top secret features under wraps - hidden from the prying eyes of Microsoft's Vista development team. When they were revealed, they fell short of wild expectations.

Now the next version of OS X won't be available until later in the year after the company delayed the release to commit more development resource to the iPhone.

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Increasingly Apple has become a victim of its own hype and the iPhone announcement at January's MacWorld Expo is a tough act to follow.

The level of expectation about future Apple products always reaches feverish levels just prior to Apple events, with Mac fanatics predicting that the most outlandish features and products are waiting in the wings as Jobs does his PT Barnum routine. When something a little more down to earth is revealed it usually costs Apple a few points on its share price. This week was no exception.

Mac OS X in particular has become a tough sell for Jobs. The 'problem' is that OS X is already a stable, mature and sophisticated operating system so the 'wow' factor is difficult to generate. Leopard is the sixth major version of the software since 2001, with Apple touting at least 150 new features in each release - Leopard apparently has more than 300.

The Leopard features announced this week were mostly solid additions to the product: the revised Finder (which now has a very 'iTunes' look and feel), Quick Look (for previewing documents without opening them) and Stacks (a way of arranging similar files). Leopard does seem to have a more rounded feel to it than its predecessor, Tiger, but it's questionable whether the upgrade can justify the $129 price tag.

Welcome Safari for Windows

The most interesting announcement of the day was the release of a public beta of Apple's Safari browser for Windows XP and Vista.

Apple's motives for the move are numerous. Firstly, it will increase its brand awareness among Windows users - who may already be iTunes and iPod fans - and give them one more reason to switch to Mac.

Secondly, greater numbers of Safari users will result in more web developers and designers producing Safari-compliant websites over time.

Thirdly, Apple, like Mozilla, generates significant revenues from Google by having the search giant's search box integrated into its browser. Each time a user searches Google via Safari, Apple gets money.

And finally, the move will raise awareness of the Safari brand and features in time for the release of the iPhone later this month in the US. (The device features both a version of OS X and Safari.)

The browser already has some critics. Early experiences with Safari for Windows have proved less than impressive with many users complaining of crashes and bugs. Others have already reported vulnerabilities with the beta, including a zero-day exploit. Apple has acted swiftly to update the software, issuing an upgrade after just a few days to plug security holes.

It is a beta after all but Apple may be alarmed at the number of complaints.

Back to the iPhone

Inevitably, during this week's keynote the Apple CEO turned to the iPhone, a device which has dominated tech headlines since its rapturous unveiling in January.

Shortly after the iPhone was announced, Apple said the device would be a closed platform for developers. The company claimed it was trying to protect both iPhone users and Cingular, the phone's mobile operator, saying one miscreant program could bring down large sections of Cingular's network.

Developers are annoyed the iPhone is a no-go area, and at the conference Jobs did little to placate them. There'll be no software development kit to allow developers to create third-party applications in the true sense for the device.

Instead Apple is encouraging its developer community to produce web apps for the device that are only run on the iPhone's Safari browser. Jobs reiterated that the company wanted to keep the iPhone reliable and secure and claimed the Safari-only route for developers was a "very sweet solution".

He added that applications developed for Safari will "look exactly and behave exactly like applications on the iPhone".

The iPhone is Apple's biggest product for some time and the company is clearly highly protective about quality prior to its initial rollout.

Meanwhile for Apple and for Jobs the challenge is how to generate enough interest in the Mac as there is for the iPhone, iPod and other 'lifestyle' products. It also has to keep its traditional user-base happy and reassure it that the Mac hardware and operating system remain a priority for the company.

Diverting internal developer effort from Leopard to the iPhone may have raised a few jitters among the Mac faithful and keeping the iPhone a closed platform for the worldwide developer community has caused some bad blood. Apple is revelling with its new product ranges but it needs to both ensure a safe and healthy future for itself.