Oh dear. Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field was on full power during yesterday’s WWDC keynote speech and as usual, the Mac press’ bullshit detectors were posted missing in action.

The story goes like this. Ever since the iPhone was announced, one of the biggest criticisms of it has been the lack of a platform for third party developers to write applications for it. Apple’s explanation at the time was that opening up the iPhone would compromise the security of Cingular’s network.

What Jobs had just told them was that the iPhone has a browser, so if they want to develop for it all they had to do was write browser-based apps. No shit, Sherlock.

Critics pointed out that this had never been a problem for any other phone manufacturer and that thousands of third party apps run on millions of phones around the world without bringing networks to a halt. Then silence. Until yesterday.

Great news, said Jobs to his audience of developers. You want to develop apps for the iPhone? Now you can. Because the iPhone fully supports Web 2.0. Now you can write Web 2.0 apps and they’ll run on the iPhone. This time the silence was from the developers. No wonder. What Jobs had just told them was that the iPhone has a browser, so if they want to develop for it all they had to do was write browser-based apps. No shit, Sherlock.

That wasn’t just spin, it was insulting and demeaning. John Gruber, as usual, put it brilliantly. ‘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.’

Sadly much of the rest of the Mac and technology press seems to regard a shit sandwich as a gourmet meal.

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